LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


ANDREW  JACKSON,  by  W.  G.  BROWN 
JAMES  B.  EADS,  by  Louis  How 
BENJAMIN   FRANKLIN,  by  PAUL  E.  MORE 
PETER  COOPER,  by  R.  W.  RAYMOND 
THOMAS  JEFFERSON,  by  H.  C.  MBRWIN 

IN  PREPARA  TION 
WILLIAM   PENN  GENERAL  GRANT 

LEWIS  AND  CLARKE 

Each  about  roo  pages,  i6mo,  with  photogra- 
vure portrait,  75  cents. 

HOUGHTON,   MIFFLIN  &   CO. 

BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


* 


JAMBS  B.  EADS 


BY 


LOUIS  HOW 


HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

Boston:  4  Park  Street ;  New  York:  11  East  Seventeenth  Street 
Chicago:  378-388  Wabash  Avenue 


COPYRIGHT,  1900,   BY  LOUIS   HOW 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


PREFACE 

I  MUST  mention  with  particular  gratitude 
several  books  that  were  invaluable  in  pre- 
paring this  sketch,  in  supplementing  the 
usual  biographical  dictionaries  and  naval 
histories.  These  are:  Captain  Mahan's 
"  The  Gulf  and  Inland  Waters  ;  "  Boynton's 
picturesque  "  History  of  the  American  Navy 
during  the  Great  Rebellion  ;  "  Mr.  Fiske's 
"Mississippi  Valley  in  the  Civil  War;" 
Snead's  "  The  Fight  for  Missouri ;  "  Mr.  C. 
M.  Woodward's  "History  of  the  St.  Louis 
Bridge  ;  "  Mr.  Estill  McHenry's  edition  of 
Eads's  "Papers  and  Addresses,"  with  a 
biography;  two  memoirs  by  Senores  Fran- 
cisco de  Garay  and  Ignacio  Garfias,  of  the 
Mexican  Association  of  Civil  Engineers ; 
and,  above  all,  several  memoirs  and  ad- 
dresses and  the  history  of  the  Jetties  by 
Mr.  Elmer  L.  Corthell,  C.  E.,  without 


227628 


vi  PREFACE 

which   I   could   scarcely  have  written  this 
Life. 

I  must  also  cordially  thank  for  kind  per- 
sonal aid  and  advice  Chancellor  Chaplin 
(of  Washington  University),  Dr.  William 
Taussig,  Mr.  Albert  Bushnell  Hart,  Major 
George  Montague  Wheeler  of  the  Engineer 
Corps  (retired),  Messrs.  Winston  Church- 
ill, William  L.  Wright,  C.  Donovan,  E. 
L.  Corthell  (who  was  as  obliging  as  he  was 
helpful),  Estill  McHenry  and  John  A. 
Ubsdell,  Mrs.  Susan  F.  Stevens,  and  espe- 
cially my  mother  —  to  whose  help  and  en- 
couragement this  Life  of  her  father  is  due. 

L.  H. 

ROCKPORT,  MASS.,  July  30,  1900. 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  EARLY  TRAINING 1 

II.  THE  GUNBOATS 22 

III.  THE  BRIDGE 49 

IV.  THE  JETTIES 75 

V.  THE  SHIP-RAILWAY         .....  105 


JAMES  B.  EADS 


EARLY    TRAINING 

JAMES  BUCHANAN  EADS  was  bora  in 
Lawrenceburg,  Indiana,  May  23,  1820. 
Both  the  Eads  family,  who  came  from  Mary- 
land, and  his  mother's  people,  the  Buchan- 
ans, who  were  originally  Irish,  were  gentle- 
folk; but  James's  father  never  was  very 
prosperous.  The  son,  however,  went  to 
school,  and  he  showed  early  a  very  special 
love  for  machinery,  observing  with  great  in- 
terest everything  of  that  kind  that  he  came 
upon.  For  a  while  the  family  lived  in  Cin- 
cinnati ;  from  there  they  removed  in  1829 
to  Louisville.  In  those  days,  when  steam- 
boats were  the  best  of  conveyances,  the  Ohio 
River  formed  a  natural  highway  between 


B.  EADS 


the  two  towns.  On  the  trip  the  small  boy 
of  nine  hung  around  the  engine  of  the  boat, 
considering  it  with  so  much  wonder  and  ad- 
miration that  finally  the  engineer,  who 
found  him  an  apt  pupil,  explained  the  vari- 
ous parts  of  the  mechanism  to  him. 

He  really  had  understood  his  lesson  well, 
for  two  years  later,  in  the  little  workshop 
that  his  father  had  fitted  up  for  him,  he 
made  a  small  engine  which  ran  by  steam. 
Besides  he  made  models  of  sawmills,  fire- 
engines,  steamboats,  and  electrotyping  ma- 
chines. Except  such  chance  instruction  as 
that  which  he  found  on  the  boat,  he  had 
had  no  teaching  in  mechanics,  but  worked 
with  the  ingenuity  of  many  a  bright  boy  ;  for 
he  is  by  no  means  the  only  one  who  ever 
took  apart  and  put  together  the  family 
clock,  or  even  a  lever-watch,  with  no  other 
tool  than  a  penknife.  One  of  his  inven- 
tions, which  shows  not  so  much  his  talent 
as  his  true  boyishness,  was  a  small  box- 
wagon,  open  only  underneath  and  with  a 
hole  in  front,  which,  suddenly  produced  be- 
fore his  mother  and  sisters,  ran  mysteri- 


EARLY  TRAINING  3 

ously  across  the  room.  The  motive  power 
concealed  within  this  agreeable  toy  was 
found  to  be  a  live  rat. 

So  much  is  often  said  of  the  precocity  of 
youthful  geniuses,  that  it  is  good  to  know 
that  young  Eads  was  after  all  a  real  flesh- 
and-blood  boy,  a  boy  so  mischievous  that, 
as  he  was  the  only  son,  his  father  hired  a 
neighbor  boy  to  come  and  play  with  him. 
Certainly  he  was  very  clever ;  but  that  he 
had  even  better  qualities  than  cleverness  is 
shown  by  his  first  actions  on  his  arrival  at 
Sakit  Louis. 

His  father,  deciding  to  move  farther  west, 
had  sent  ahead  the  mother,  the  two  daugh- 
ters just  grown,  and  the  lad  of  thirteen,  in- 
tending to  follow  with  supplies  for  opening 
a  shop.  Again  the  route  was  by  river. 
Arrived  at  Saint  Louis,  the  boat  caught 
fire ;  and  early  on  a  cold  morning  the  fam- 
ily set  foot,  scarcely  clothed,  not  only  in  the 
city  of  which  the  young  boy  was  to  be  one 
day  the  leading  citizen,  but  on  the  very 
spot,  it  is  said,  where  he  was  afterwards  to 
base  one  pier  of  his  great  bridge.  On  that 


4  JAMES  B.  EADS 

bleak  morning,  however,  none  of  them  fore- 
saw a  bright  future,  or  indeed  anything  but 
a  distressful  present.  Some  ladies  of  the 
old  French  families  of  the  town  were  very 
kind  to  the  forlorn  women ;  and  once  on 
her  feet  Mrs.  Eads  set  about  supporting 
herself  and  her  children.  In  those  days, 
when  sometimes  a  letter  took  a  week  to  go 
a  couple  of  hundred  miles,  she  was  not  the 
one  to  wait  for  help  from  her  husband ;  so 
she  immediately  rented  a  house  and  took 
boarders.  The  boy,  as  resourceful  and  self- 
reliant  as  his  mother,  now  showed  his  en- 
ergy as  well  as  his  devotion  by  doing  the 
first  thing  he  found  to  help  her.  In  going 
along  the  street  he  saw  some  apples  for  sale, 
and,  buying  as  many  of  them  as  he  could 
afford,  he  peddled  them  to  the  passers-by. 

That,  of  course,  was  no  permanent  occu- 
pation for  a  well-bred  boy,  whose  associa- 
tions and  abilities  were  both  high.  Never- 
theless his  family  could  no  longer  afford  to 
have  him  at  school,  and  it  was  necessary  for 
him  to  do  some  sort  of  work.  One  of  his 
mother's  boarders,  a  Mr.  Barrett  Williams, 


EARLY  TRAINING  5 

offered  him  a  position  in  his  mercantile 
house.  Before  long  this  gentleman  discov- 
ered his  young  employee's  aptitude  and 
overwhelming  love  for  mechanics,  and 
kindly  allowed  the  lad  the  vuse  of  his  own 
library.  Studying  at  night  the  scientific 
books  which  he  found  there,  Eads  acquired 
his  first  theoretical  knowledge  of  engineer- 
ing. In  this  way,  without  teachers,  he  be- 
gan, in  a  time  when  there  was  no  free 
higher  education,  to  educate  himself;  and 
both  then  and  ever  after  he  was  a  constant 
reader  not  only  of  scientific  works,  but  of 
all  kinds  of  books.  This  practical  experi- 
ence in  helping  to  support  his  family  and  in 
getting  his  own  education,  while  he  was  still 
so  young  a  lad,  was  the  school  in  which 
lie  learned  self-reliance.  It  is  pleasant  to 
know  that  the  earnestness  of  life  did  not 
take  all  of  his  boyishness  away  from  him, 
for  it  must  have  been  while  he  was  hard  at 
work  that  he  built  a  real  steamboat,  six  feet 
long,  and  navigated  it  on  Chouteau's  Pond. 
For  five  years  he  was  a  clerk  in  the  dry- 
goods  house.  At  the  end  of  that  time,  prob- 


6  JAMES  B.  EADS 

ably  because  he  was  in  poor  health,  he  left 
that  position  for  one  that  would  take  him 
more  into  the  open  air.  Though  his  health 
was  not  strong,  he  was  by  no  means  an  in- 
valid ;  for  at  nineteen  his  muscles  were 
solid  and  his  fund  of  nervous  energy  was 
inexhaustible.  So,  with  the  natural  taste  of 
a  boy  for  a  more  exciting  life,  he  took  a  posi- 
tion as  clerk  on  a  Mississippi  Eiver  steam- 
boat. While  he  had  nothing  to  do  with 
actually  running  the  boat,  he  certainly  kept 
his  eyes  open  to  everything  going  on  both 
on  board  and  in  the  river ;  and  began  then 
to  make  an  acquaintance  with  the  stream 
which  was  later  to  be  the  scene  of  his  great- 
est labors.  If  ever  Nature  played  a  promi- 
nent part  in  the  life  of  a  man,  the  Missis- 
sippi did  in  that  of  Eads ;  for  it  became  the 
opportunity  for  three  of  his  chief  works, 
and  from  it  he  learned  perhaps  more  of  the 
laws  of  science  than  from  all  the  books  he 
ever  read.  To  understand  his  life,  one  must 
have  some  idea  of  the  huge  river,  which 
seems  to  flow  sluggishly  or  rapidly  through 
his  whole  career. 


EARLY  TRAINING  7 

The  Mississippi  River,  with  its  branches, 
drains  the  larger  part  of  the  whole  United 
States,  —  that  is,  from  the  Alleghanies  on 
the  east  to  the  Eockies  on  the  west.  The 
main  stream,  4200  miles  long,  and  in  some 
places  over  a  mile  wide,  flows  along  with 
tremendous  force,  ceaselessly  eating  away 
its  yellow  clay  banks.  The  water,  full  of 
sediment,  is  of  a  thick  dull  brown  color. 
The  clay  that  it  washes  off  in  the  bends 
it  deposits  on  the  juts  of  land,  thus  form- 
ing greater  and  greater  curves ;  so  that 
often  the  distance  between  two  points  is 
very  much  less  by  land  than  by  water. 
Sometimes  there  are  only  a  few  yards  across 
the  neck  of  a  peninsula,  around  which  the 
channel  distance  is  many  miles  ;  and  on  one 
side  the  level  of  the  river  is  several  feet 
higher  than  on  the  other.  Gradually  the 
water  keeps  eating  its  way,  until  it  forces 
a  passage  through  the  neck,  and  then  the 
torrent  rushes  through  in  a  cascade,  with  a 
roar  that  can  be  heard  for  miles.  The 
banks  dissolve  like  sugar,  and  the  next  day 
steamboats  can  cross  where  the  day  before 


8  JAMES  B.  EADS 

were  fields  and  may  be  houses.  Besides  this, 
the  current  is  constantly  washing  away  and 
building  up  not  only  hidden  bars  on  the  river 
bottom,  but  even  isknds  above  its  surface. 
In  the  fall  and  in  the  spring  it  rises  with  such 
terrifying  rapidity  that  some  years  it  quickly 
overflows  its  banks  in  certain  reaches  till  it 
is  sixty  miles  wide.  Houses  and  trees  torn 
from  their  places,  and  wrecks  of  boats,  float 
or  protrude  from  the  bottom  of  this  brown 
lake.  And  when  the  flood  subsides,  the 
current  often  chooses  a  new  and  changed 
channel.  Amid  the  ever-varying  dangers 
of  such  a  river  the  only  safety  for  steam- 
boats is  in  a  race  of  pilots  so  learned  and 
so  alert  as  to  have  the  shifting  bars  and 
courses  always  in  their  minds.  In  1839, 
when  steamboats  were  the  only  means  of 
rapid  transit  in  the  West,  when  there  were 
more  of  them  in  the  harbor  of  the  little 
town  of  Saint  Louis  than  to-day  when  it  is 
a  great  city,  this  class  of  pilots  was  a  large 
and  a  very  respectable  one.  Much  of  their 
knowledge  of  the  river  was  what  young 
Eads  learned  while  he  was  a  clerk  among 


EARLY  TRAINING  9 

them;  and  as  time  went  on,  he  came  to 
realize  that  although  the  Mississippi  seems 
so  capricious  in  its  terrible  games  that  one 
would  think  them  the  result  of  chance,  yet 
in  truth,  they  "  are  controlled  by  laws  as 
immutable  as  the  Creator." 

Despite  all  care  that  could  be  used,  steam- 
boats were  every  week  sunk  and  wrecked, 
and  with  their  valuable  engines,  boilers,  and 
cargoes  were  often  left  where  they  lay  in  the 
ceaseless  brown  current.  After  he  had  been 
for  three  years  on  the  river,  Eads  gave  up 
his  clerkship  to  go  into  the  business  of  rais- 
ing these  boats,  their  machinery,  and  their 
freight.  In  1842,  at  the  age  of  twenty-two, 
he  formed  a  partnership  with  Case  &  Nel- 
son, boat-builders.  His  first  appearance  in 
the  new  business  was  an  experience  that  well 
shows  his  quick  inventive  genius,  his  persist- 
ency, and  his  courage.  While  his  diving- 
bell  boat  was  building,  a  barge  loaded  with 
pig-lead  sank  in  the  rapids  at  Keokuk,  212 
miles  from  Saint  Louis.  A  contract  having 
been  made  with  its  owners,  Eads  hurried  up 
there  to  rescue  the  freight  from  fifteen  feet 


10  JAMES  B.  EADS 

of  water.  He  had  no  knowledge  himself  of 
diving-armor ;  but  he  had  engaged  a  skilled 
diver  from  the  Great  Lakes,  who  brought 
his  own  apparatus.  They  set  out  in  a  barge 
and  anchored  over  the  wreck ;  but,  once 
there,  they  soon  discovered  that  the  current 
was  so  exceedingly  rapid  that  the  diver  could 
do  nothing  in  it.  Eads  at  once  returned  to 
Keokuk,  and,  buying  a  forty-gallon  whiskey 
hogshead,  took  it  out  to  the  wreck ;  and 
having  knocked  out  one  head,  he  slung  pigs 
of  lead  round  his  improvised  diving-bell, 
made  a  seat  inside  it,  rigged  it  to  his  der- 
rick and  air-pumps,  and  then  asked  the  diver 
to  go  down  in  it.  The  diver  having  very 
naturally  refused,  Eads  on  the  spot  set  him- 
self a  precedent  which,  during  his  after  life, 
he  never  broke,  —  saying  that  he  would  not 
ask  an  employee  to  go  where  he  would  not 
trust  himself ,  he  got  inside  his  hogshead  and 
was  lowered  into  the  river.  His  assistants 
were  unused  to  managing  diving-bells,  and 
when  they  came  to  haul  him  up  the  derrick 
got  out  of  order.  By  main  force  they  were 
able  to  raise  the  hogshead  to  the  surface, 


EARLY  TRAINING  11 

but  not  above  it.  As  the  air-pump  con- 
tinued to  work  all  the  while,  Eads,  though 
wondering  what  was  amiss,  sat  patiently  in 
his  place,  till  finally  he  saw  a  hand  appear 
under  the  rim  of  the  hogshead.  Seizing 
this,  he  ducked  under  and  got  out.  Al- 
though the  rough  diving-bell  worked  thus 
awkwardly  at  first,  it  served  well  enough, 
and  finally  all  of  the  lost  freight  was  saved. 

A  young  man  so  fearless,  so  energetic, 
and  so  able  to  invent  mechanical  devices  at 
sudden  need,  was  bound  to  succeed  in  a 
business  like  this.  And  young  Eads  did 
succeed.  "Fortune,"  he  believed,  "favors 
the  brave ; "  and  his  motto  was,  "  Drive 
on!" 

The  insurance  companies  were  willing  to 
give  the  wreckers  a  large  interest,  some- 
times as  much  as  a  half,  of  the  rescued  car- 
goes ;  and  there  was  a  law  by  which  a  vessel 
or  freight  that  had  been  wrecked  for  five 
years  belonged  to  whoever  could  get  it  up. 
Eads  and  his  partners  worked  up  and  down 
the  river  for  hundreds  of  miles.  The  first 
diving-bell  boat  was  followed  by  a  larger 


12  JAMES  B.  EADS 

one,  provided  with  machinery  for  pumping 
out  sand,  and  for  raising  whole  hulls. 
While  in  this  hazardous  business  Eads  m- 
vented  many  new  appliances  for  use  in  its 
various  branches.  Because  he  was  in  charge 
of  a  boat  people  began  to  call  the  young 
wrecker  Captain  Eads,  and  that  was  the  only 
reason  for  a  title  which  clung  to  him  always. 
He  grew  now  to  know  the  river  as  few  have 
ever  known  it,  —  his  operations  extended 
from  Galena,  Illinois,  to  the  Balize  at  the 
river's  very  mouth,  and  even  into  the  tribu- 
taries of  the  Mississippi,  —  and  he  used  to 
say  that  there  was  not  a  stretch  of  fifty 
miles  in  the  twelve  hundred  between  Saint 
Louis  and  New  Orleans  in  which  he  had  not 
stood  on  the  bottom  under  his  diving-bell. 

With  the  same  devotion  to  his  parents  as 
when  he  peddled  the  apples  in  the  street, 
Eads  now  bought  them  a  farm  in  Iowa,  and 
provided  in  every  way  he  could  for  their 
comfort.  But  beyond  the  ordinary  desire 
of  making  a  fortune  for  them,  for  himself, 
and  for  a  new  interest  that  was  coming  into 
his  life,  it  does  not  appear  that  there  were 


EARLY  TRAINING  13 

in  his  mind  any  unusual  ambitions,  any  of 
the  dreams  of  genius.  As  yet  he  was  only 
a  hard-working,  earnest  young  man,  extraor- 
dinarily clever  to  be  sure,  but  founding  on 
that  cleverness  no  visions  of  great  renown 
in  the  future.  Perhaps  this  was  because  he 
had  enough  to  dream  of  in  the  present, 
enough  hopes  of  purely  domestic  happiness 
to  look  towards.  For  he  had  fallen  in  love 
with  a  Miss  Martha  Dillon,  a  young  lady  of 
about  his  own  age,  daughter  of  a  rich  man 
in  Saint  Louis.  The  father  disapproved  of 
the  match,  not  only  because  he  thought  the 
suitor  too  young,  too  poor,  too  unknown, 
but  because  he  wished  to  keep  his  daughter 
with  him,  and  for  other  less  reasonable 
causes. 

The  letters  between  the  engaged  couple 
show  Eads  at  twenty-five  as  a  keen,  experi- 
enced, and  yet  an  unsophisticated  young 
man  ;  generous,  proud,  brave,  and  courte- 
ous ;  a  lover  of  Nature,  of  poetry,  of  peo- 
ple, and  of  good  books  ;  an  inveterate  early 
riser ;  reverend  in  religion,  and  yet,  while 
nominally  a  Catholic,  really  a  free-thinker ; 


14  JAMES  B.  EADS 

sentimental  in  his  feelings  almost  as  if  he 
had  lived  a  century  sooner,  and  at  the  same 
time  controlling  his  true  and  deep  emotions, 
and  showing  his  strong  love  only  to  those  he 
loved. 

At  last  Eads  and  Miss  Dillon  were  mar- 
ried, he  being  over  twenty-five  at  the  time, 
she  nearly  twenty-four.  Eads  then  sold  out 
his  wrecking  business  and  left  the  river. 
He  probably  made  this  change  because  he 
hoped  thereby  not  only  to  be  more  with  his 
wife,  but  also  to  support  her  in  the  comfort' 
she  had  been  used  to,  and  to  show  her  father 
that  he  could  do  so.  The  new  enterprise, 
into  which  at  least  one  of  his  old  partners 
entered  with  him,  and  into  which  he  put  all 
his  money,  was  the  manufacture  of  glass ; 
and  they  built  the  first  glass  factory  west  of 
the  Ohio  Eiver.  He  had  to  go  to  Pittsburg 
—  then  a  long  journey  by  boat,  stage,  and 
rail  —  to  get  trained  workmen  and  to  learn 
the  process  himself.  Almost  all  of  the  ne- 
cessary ingredients  and  apparatus  had  to  be 
sent  for  to  Pittsburg,  to  Cleveland,  or  to 
New  York ;  and  they  were  often  slow  in  ar- 


EARLY  TRAINING  15 

riving  and  thereby  made  matters  drag  con- 
siderably. Still  there  was  always  something 
to  do,  and  Eads,  the  only  one  of  the  part- 
ners who  understood  the  trade,  was  forced 
to  work  extraordinarily  hard.  With  his 
usual  persistence  he  stuck  to  it  pluckily, 
often  staying  up  late  into  the  night  and 
rising  the  next  day  before  dawn  to  oversee 
operations.  He  was  also  indispensable  for 
his  faculty  of  managing  men ;  and  a  letter  to 
his  wife  written  on  his  twenty-seventh  birth- 
day (1847)  shows  how  strong  the  man  al- 
ready was  in  that  power  of  getting  the  most 
from  a  workman,  which  was  afterwards  to 
count  for  so  much  in  his  best  work.  An 
employer,  he  says,  must  "  have  constant  con- 
trol of  his  temper,  and  be  able  to  speak 
pleasantly  to  one  man  the  next  moment 
after  having  spoken  in  the  harshest  manner 
to  another,  and  even  to  give  the  same  man 
a  pleasant  reply  a  few  minutes  after  having 
corrected  him.  Self  must  be  left  out  of  the 
matter  entirely,  and  a  man  or  boy  spoken 
to  only  as  concerns  his  conduct ;  and  the 
authority  which  the  controller  has  over  the 


16  JAMES  B.  EADS 

controlled,  used  only  when  absolutely  neces- 
sary, and  then  with  the  utmost  promptness." 

However,  despite  all  his  firmness  and 
perseverance,  the  difficulties  of  the  glass- 
works became  greater  and  greater ;  and  at 
last,  after  having  been  run  two  years,  they 
were  shut  down.  Eads  was  left  with  debts 
of  $25,000.  The  very  unusual  action  of  his 
creditors  in  this  crisis  shows  what  confidence 
they  had  in  his  integrity  and  in  his  ability ; 
for  they  advanced  him  $  1500  with  which  to 
go  back  into  the  wrecking  business,  and  he 
at  once  rejoined  his  former  partners.  He 
now  worked  harder,  if  possible,  than  ever ; 
for  he  felt,  as  he  wrote  to  his  wife,  that  "  with 
a  man  in  debt  it  cannot  be  said  that  his  time 
is  his  own."  Powerful  as  he  was  physically, 
his  health  was  not  good,  but  even  in  sickness 
he  scarcely  ceased  to  toil  during  the  first 
year  or  two ;  and  at  the  end  of  ten  years, 
not  only  had  all  his  debts  been  long  since 
paid,  but  his  firm  was  worth  half  a  million 
dollars. 

Work,  however,  was  to  him  only  a  means 
to  an  end.  The  real  dignity  of  character  he 


EARLY  TRAINING  17 

knew  to  lie  in  culture.  To  a  small  boy  he 
sends,  in  one  of  his  letters,  the  message  that 
he  should  "  be  a  good  boy  and  study  hard, 
as  that  is  the  only  way  to  be  respected  when 
he  is  grown."  Even  in  his  amusements  his 
mind  sought  occupation  :  we  find  him  at 
night  on  the  diving-bell  boat  playing  chess, 
and  in  later  years  he  had  become  unusually 
adept  at  that  game. 

The  wrecking  business  was  full  of  life  and 
action.  Here  and  there,  up  and  down  the 
river,  and  into  its  branches,  wherever  a  boat 
was  wrecked  or  burned  or  run  aground,  the 
Submarine  hurried  off  to  reach  the  spot  be- 
fore other  wreckers.  Under  their  bell  the 
divers  got  at  the  engines,  boilers,  and  freight, 
while  the  pumps,  worked  from  above,  cleared 
away  the  sand ;  and  sometimes  by  means  of 
great  chains  and  derricks  the  very  hull  itself 
would  be  lifted  and  towed  ashore.  But  on 
that  huge  river,  which  at  times  would  sud- 
denly rise  three  feet  in  a  single  night,  and 
whose  strong  current  played  such  giant  pranks 
as  turning  over  a  wreck  in  the  chains  that 
were  raising  it,  there  was  need  of  eternal 


18  JAMES  B.  EADS 

vigilance  and  agility.  However,  Eads  was 
more  on  his  own  ground  on  the  river  than 
on  the  shore,  and  his  business  so  increased 
that  he  was  soon  running  four  diving-bell 
boats.  In  1849  twenty-nine  boats  were 
burned  at  the  levee  in  Saint  Louis  in  one 
big  fire,  and  most  of  their  remains  were  re- 
moved by  him.  Winter  as  well  as  summer 
the  work  went  on ;  and  the  task  of  cutting 
out  a  vessel  wrecked  in  an  ice-gorge,  or  of 
raising  one  from  beneath  the  ice,  must  have 
been  as  trying  as  walking  the  river  bottom 
in  search  of  a  wreck.  Eads  himself,  years 
later,  thus  describes  one  of  his  many  experi- 
ences :  "  Five  miles  below  Cairo,  I  searched 
the  river  bottom  for  the  wreck  of  the  Nep- 
tune, for  more  than  sixty  days,  and  in  a 
distance  of  three  miles.  My  boat  was  held 
by  a  long  anchor  line,  and  was  swung  from 
side  to  side  of  the  channel,  over  a  distance 
of  500  feet,  by  side  anchor  lines,  while  I 
walked  on  the  river  bottom  under  the  bell 
across  the  channel.  The  boat  was  then 
dropped  twenty  feet  farther  down  stream, 
and  I  then  walked  back  again  as  she  was 


EARLY  TRAINING  19 

hauled  towards  the  other  shore.  In  this 
way  I  walked  on  the  bottom  four  hours  at 
least,  every  day  (Sundays  excepted)  during 
that  time."  For  a  day's  work  the  city  of 
Saint  Louis  gave  him  $80,  out  of  which  he 
paid  his  own  workmen.  He  was  so  prosper- 
ous that,  as  he  wrote  to  his  wife,  there  was 
no  need  for  him  to  join  the  rush  to  Califor- 
nia to  get  gold ;  and  his  success  caused  much 
envy  among  his  rivals.  He  began  to  clear 
the  channel  of  the  Mississippi  from  some  of 
its  obstructions  and  to  improve  the  harbor 
of  Saint  Louis. 

In  1856  he  knew  his  work  so  well  that  he 
went  to  Washington  and  proposed  to  Con- 
gress to  remove  all  the  snags  and  wrecks 
from  the  Western  rivers,  —  the  Mississippi, 
the  Missouri,  the  Arkansas,  and  the  Ohio,  — 
and  to  keep  their  channels  open  for  a  term 
of  years.  A  bill  to  that  purpose  passed  the 
House,  but  in  the  Senate  it  was  defeated  by 
Jefferson  Davis  and  others.  The  next  year, 
on  account  of  poor  health,  Eads  retired  from 
business,  but  he  carried  with  him  a  fortune. 
He  had  not  succeeded  in  his  purpose  at 


20  JAMES  B.  EADS 

Washington,  but  his  name  was  known  there 
and  remembered. 

Meanwhile  his  wife  had  died,  and  two 
years  later  he  had  married  the  widow  of  a 
first  cousin.  "With  his  second  wife  he  made 
his  first  trip  to  Europe,  —  the  first  of  very 
many  he  was  destined  to  make.  In  1857, 
being  thirty-seven  years  old,  he  retired,  as  I 
have  said,  from  business. 

His  youthful  hopes,  the  ordinary  ambi- 
tions of  men,  were  realized.  He  had  been 
a  poor  boy:  at  only  thirty-seven  he  was 
rich,  —  very  rich  for  the  times  and  for  the 
place.  From  his  proposals  to  the  govern- 
ment, we  may  imagine  that  he  now  had 
broader  dreams  of  usefulness.  But  his  first 
proposition  toward  river  improvement  had 
been  checked.  He  had  bought  a  large  house 
and  grounds.  He  made  for  himself  a  rose- 
arbor,  and  for  four  years  he  was  as  much 
unoccupied  as  his  lively  mind  permitted. 
He  was  at  any  rate  what  is  called  a  man  of 
leisure. 

Then,  four  years  being  passed,  he  received 
from  Washington,  from  his  friend  Attorney- 


EARLY  TRAINING  21 

General  Bates,  a  letter  written  three  days 
after  the  surrender  of  Fort  Sumter,  which 
said:  "Be  not  surprised  if  you  are  called 
here  suddenly  by  telegram.  If  called,  come 
instantly.  In  a  certain  contingency  it  will 
be  necessary  to  have  the  aid  of  the  most 
thorough  knowledge  of  our  Western  rivers, 
and  the  use  of  steam  on  them,  and  in  that 
event  I  advised  that  you  should  be  con- 
sulted." 

The  government  was  thinking  of  placing 
gunboats  to  occupy  and  to  defend  the  West- 
ern waters. 


II 

THE   GUNBOATS 

AT  the  beginning  of  the  Civil  "War  the 
State  of  Missouri  and  the  city  of  Saint  Louis 
were  in  a  very  confused  condition.  A  bor- 
der slave  State,  Missouri  contained  a  great 
many  persons  of  Southern  birth  and  South- 
ern sympathies;  and  besides  a  good  many 
strong  Northern  men,  Saint  Louis  had  also 
a  considerable  German  population,  all  stanch 
Unionists.  But  excepting  the  Germans  and 
one  or  two  dauntless  clear-seeing  men,  who 
read  the  future,  few  persons  in  either  party 
wished  to  fight  if  fighting  could  possibly  be 
avoided.  The  governor,  a  Southern  man, 
while  hesitating  at  actual  secession,  wished 
and  tried  to  control  the  power  of  the  State 
so  that  at  need  it  might  help  the  South; 
and  while  professing  loyalty,  he  did  all  he 
could  to  prove  his  disloyalty  to  the  Union. 
The  legislature,  however,  would  not  pass  a 


THE   GUNBOATS  23 

bill  to  arm  the  State,  thereby,  says  an  histo- 
rian, causing  the  South  to  sustain  "  a  defeat 
more  disastrous  to  its  independence  than  any 
which  thereafter  befell  its  arms,  down  to  the 
fall  of  Vicksburg."  In  response  to  Lin- 
coln's call  for  troops,  the  governor  refused 
to  send  any  from  Missouri.  An  extraordi- 
nary state  convention,  called  in  this  crisis, 
voted  against  secession.  Seeing  that  the 
governor,  notwithstanding  this,  was  covertly 
aiming  at  throwing  himself  and  the  State, 
so  far  as  he  could,  in  with  the  Confederacy, 
young  Frank  Blair  and  General  Nathaniel 
Lyon,  carrying  things  with  a  high  hand, 
seized  and  dispersed  the  state  militia  en- 
camped in  Saint  Louis,  got  control  of  al- 
most all  the  Federal  arms  in  the  State,  and 
with  outside  aid  and  help  from  the  regular 
army,  chased  the  governor  from  the  capital, 
and  held  him  at  bay  long  enough  for  the 
convention  to  depose  him  and  the  General 
Assembly,  and  to  establish  a  state  govern- 
ment loyal  to  the  Union. 

During  all  these  lively  events  Saint  Louis 
was  in  confusion.     There  were  many  minds 


24  JAMES  B.  EADS 

in  the  town  —  secessionists,  conditional  and 
unconditional  unionists,  submissionists :  some 
who  wanted  war,  some  who  wanted  only  to 
preserve  peace  so  that  they  might  keep  their 
homes  and  fortunes  safe,  even  on  condition 
of  abandoning  slavery. 

James*  B.  Eads  did  not  own  a  slave,  nor 
did  he  approve  of  slavery,  but  among  his 
friends  and  associates  there  were  many  who 
did  own  them,  and  many  secessionists.  It 
is  curious  to  observe  how  little  a  differ- 
ence of  opinion  on  these  points,  that  had 
become  so  vital,  was  able  to  put  personal 
enmity  among  men  who  were  true  friends. 
Of  course,  among  mere  acquaintances  there 
were  many  instances  of  bitterness  and  taunt- 
ing. Through  it  all,  Eads,  with  his  rare 
tact  and  his  exquisite  manners,  steered  with- 
out collision,  offending  none  of  those  who 
were  not  on  his  side.  And  yet  we  are  pre- 
sently to  see  what  a  deep  interest  his  side 
had  for  him,  and  how  much  he  was  able  and 
willing  to  do  for  it. 

Between  the  election  and  the  inaugura- 
tion of  Lincoln,  Eads  and  three  other  pro- 


THE   GUNBOATS  25 

minent  citizens  of  Saint  Louis  wrote  a  letter 
to  him,  expressing  their  fears  that  an  at- 
tempt at  secession  would  be  made,  and 
urging  the  policy  of  having  a  secretary  of 
state  from  one  of  the  slave  States.  And 
they  recommended,  for  "  purity  of  character, 
stern  integrity,  exalted  patriotism,  and  en- 
lightened statesmanship,"  Edward  Bates, 
born  in  Virginia,  married  into  a  South  Car- 
olina family,  and  long  resident  in  Missouri. 
A  first  draught  of  this  letter  is  in  Eads's 
handwriting.  When  the  new  cabinet  was 
formed,  Bates,  a  personal  friend  of  Lin- 
coln's as  well  as  of  Eads's,  was  given  a  po- 
sition in  it,  that  of  attorney-general.  It 
was  he  who,  three  days  after  Sumter  was 
fired  on,  wrote  the  letter,  already  quoted, 
telling  Eads  to  expect  a  telegram  calling 
him  to  Washington  for  consultation  on  the 
best  method  of  defending  and  occupying 
the  Western  rivers.  Eads  himself  was  by 
this  time  no  believer  in  a  defensive  policy 
for  the  government.  After  Sumter  he  had 
already  written  to  Bates  advocating  deter- 
mined and  vigorous  measures.  So,  when 


26  JAMES  B.  EADS 

the  telegram  soon  followed  the  letter,  he  was 
glad  to  hasten  to  Washington  in  order  to 
be  of  use.  There  he  was  introduced  to  the 
Secretary  and  to  the  Assistant  Secretary  of 
the  Navy. 

The  importance  of  controlling  the  Missis- 
sippi River  was  well  seen  by  the  great  strat- 
egist, Lincoln,  who  called  it  "  the  backbone 
of  the  rebellion  "  —  "  the  key  to  the  whole 
situation."  If  it  could  be  held  by  the  gov- 
ernment, the  Confederacy  could  neither 
move  its  troops  up  and  down  it,  nor  —  thus 
cut  in  half  —  could  it  bring  over  from 
Texas  and  Arkansas  the  many  men  and 
the  quantities  of  food  greatly  needed  by  its 
armies  east  of  the  river.  Realizing  this, 
the  Confederacy  was  already  beginning  to 
fortify  the  Mississippi  and  the  Ohio  with  its 
branches.  To  dislodge  the  rebels  Bates  pro- 
posed a  fleet  of  gunboats.  The  Secretary 
of  War,  however,  thinking  this  idea  of  gun- 
boats either  useless  or  impracticable,  showed 
at  first  no  interest  in  the  plan.  But  at  the 
request  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  who 
realized  the  importance  of  the  subject,  Eads 


THE   GUNBOATS  27 

prepared  a  statement  of  his  views,  embody- 
ing Bates's  project.  In  it  he  also  suggested, 
besides  the  best  kind  of  boats  for  the  ser- 
vice, batteries,  to  be  erected  at  several 
points.  Commodore  Paulding,  on  reading 
this  statement,  at  once  reported  in  favor  of 
it.  Suddenly,  the  Secretary  of  War,  when 
he  saw  that  the  scheme  was  coming  to  some- 
thing, claimed  jurisdiction  over  the  whole 
matter,  but  finally  he  agreed  to  order  the 
same  officer  already  appointed  for  the  pur- 
pose by  the  Navy  to  go  west  with  Eads  and 
purchase  vessels  to  be  armed.  All  neces- 
sary approvals  having  been  made,  the  two 
went  to  Cairo,  where  they  examined  the 
Benton,  one  of  the  former  snag-boat  fleet. 
Afterwards  Eads  proposed  the  strong  and 
swift  Missouri  River  steamboats.  But 
neither  of  these  suited  his  colleague,  who  at 
last  went  to  Cincinnati,  and  buying  three 
boats  there,  armed  them  himself :  and  very 
useful  boats  they  were. 

The  gunboat  scheme  had  been  first  pro- 
posed in  April ;  it  was  now  June,  and  ex- 
cepting these  three  wooden  boats,  nothing 


28  JAMES  B.  EADS 

seemed  to  have  come  of  it.  So  in  July  the 
quartermaster-general  advertised  for  bids 
for  ironclad  gunboats.  In  1861  ironclads 
were  a  rather  new  thing.  France  and  Eng- 
land had  a  few  of  them,  but  at  the  time 
the  Merrimac  was  begun  no  ironclad  had 
been  finished  in  America.  On  August  5, 
when  the  bids  were  opened,  that  of  Eads 
was  found  not  only  to  be  the  lowest,  but  to 
promise  the  quickest  work.  On  August  7 
the  contract  was  signed  for  seven  gunboats 
to  be  delivered  at  Cairo  on  October  10,  — 
sixty-four  days  later.  This  contract,  it  has 
been  said,  would  under  ordinary  circum- 
stances have  been  thought  by  most  men  im- 
possible to  fulfill.  And  the  circumstances 
then  were  anything  but  ordinary :  it  was  a 
time  of  great  financial  distress ;  in  the  bor- 
der slave  States  the  pursuits  of  peace  were 
interrupted ;  all  was  in  turmoil  and  confu- 
sion ;  rolling-mills,  machine-shops,  foundries, 
forges,  and  sawmills  were  all  idle,  and  many 
of  the  mechanics  had  gone  to  the  war.  The 
timber  for  the  boats  was  still  growing  in  the 
forests  ;  the  iron  was  not  yet  manufactured. 


THE   GUNBOATS  29 

And  so  short  was  the  time  that  two  or  three 
factories  alone,  no  matter  how  well  equipped 
they  might  be,  were  not  to  be  depended 
upon.  Yet  Eads  had  undertaken  to  start 
up  the  factories,  to  gather  the  materials,  and 
to  build  his  boats  in  two  months.  Never 
were  the  self-reliance  and  the  energy  of  the 
man  better  exhibited ;  but  his  keen  business 
sense  might  have  hesitated,  had  not  his  pa- 
triotism shown  him  that  the  Union  needed 
the  boats  quickly. 

Most  of  the  machine-shops  and  foundries 
of  Saint  Louis  were  at  once  set  to  work 
night  and  day ;  and  for  hours  at  a  time  the 
telegraph  wires  to  Pittsburg  and  to  Cincinnati 
were  in  use.  Twenty-one  steam-engines  and 
thirty-five  boilers  were  needed.  Prepared 
timber  was  brought  from  eight  different 
States,  and  the  first  iron  plating  used  in  the 
war  was  rolled  not  only  in  Saint  Louis  and 
Cincinnati,  but  in  small  towns  in  Ohio  and 
Kentucky.  "Within  two  weeks  4000  men 
were  at  work  in  places  miles  apart,  —  work- 
ing by  night  and  seven  days  a  week.  To 
the  workmen  on  the  hulls  who  should  stick 


30  JAMES  B.  EADS 

to  the  task  till  it  was  done  Eads  promised 
a  "  handsome  bonus ;  "  and  in  this  way 
gratuitously  paid  out  thousands  of  dollars. 
The  building  of  this  little  fleet  has  been 
called  "a  triumph  of  sagacity,  pluck,  and 
executive  ability  unsurpassed  by  any  ex- 
ploit in  the  military  or  civil  history  of  the 
times." 

To  be  sure,  the  seven  boats  were  not  fin- 
ished at  the  time  called  for.  That  they  were 
all  launched  within  a  hundred  days  of  the 
signing  of  the  contract  is  amazing  enough, 
but  if  they  had  been  built  after  designs  of 
Eads's  own,  so  that  he  would  not  have  been 
delayed  by  sudden  changes  necessitated  when 
he  found  weaknesses  in  the  plans  furnished 
him,  or  when  the  designer  changed  the  spe- 
cifications, and  if  the  government,  harassed 
and  driven  as  it  then  was,  had  been  able  to 
pay  him  according  to  its  part  of  the  contract, 
there  is  little  doubt  that  he  would  have  had 
the  vessels  finished  in  time  according  to  his 
agreement.  Even  as  it  was,  it  was  legally 
decided  later  that  he  was  not  at  fault. 
When  he  entered  into  the  contract  he  was 


THE  GUNBOATS  31 

a  rich  man ;  and  as  he  was  not  to  receive 
his  first  payment  from  the  government  for 
twenty  days,  probably  only  a  rich  man  could 
have  had  the  credit  necessary  to  put  so  much 
machinery  into  motion.  As  it  proved  sub- 
sequently, the  government  was  so  lax  in  its 
payment,  and  demanded  work  so  much  more 
expensive  than  the  specifications  called  for, 
that  before  the  work  was  finished  Eads  was 
in  a  hard  way  financially.  He  had  been 
much  worried  and  distracted  in  obtaining 
funds :  after  exhausting  his  own  fortune  he 
had  sought  the  aid  of  patriotic  friends,  and 
it  was  principally  in  order  to  pay  them  back 
that  he  made  his  appeal  to  the  government. 
By  the  terms  of  his  contract  he  might  have 
delayed  the  work  until  his  payments  were 
received,  and  might  thus  have  saved  himself 
great  distress  and  worry,  but,  as  I  have  said, 
he  realized  how  much  the  Union  needed  the 
boats.  He  himself  said  that  it  was  "  of  the 
utmost  importance  that  these  boats  should 
be  made  as  effective  as  possible,  without 
reference  to  how  I  was  to  be  affected  by  de- 
lays, .  .  .  and  that  their  completion  should 


32  JAMES  B.  EADS 

be  pushed  with  the  utmost  energy,  whether 
the  government  failed  in  its  part  of  the  bar- 
gain or  not."  Their  rapid  completion  then 
was  a  proof  not  only  of  Eads's  masterful 
energy,  but  of  his  self-sacrificing  patriotism 
as  well.  Ultimately  he  was  paid  most  of 
the  money  for  the  gunboats,  and  as  a  result 
of  his  patriotism  won  back  the  fortune  he 
had  risked ;  but  at  the  time  of  course  it 
hampered  him  intolerably  to  be  without 
funds.  He  had,  besides,  other  difficulties  to 
contend  with.  At  least  one  of  his  sub-con- 
tractors or  head-workmen  was  a  disappointed 
bidder  for  the  gunboat  contract,  and  was 
on  a  salary  which  ran  till  the  boats  were  fin- 
ished; and  while  Eads  would  not  mention 
such  a  suspicion  in  public,  he  suggested  in 
a  private  letter  that  this  had  been  an  addi- 
tional cause  of  delay. 

After  all,  the  seven  boats  had  been 
launched  and  were  ready  to  be  put  into  com- 
mission by  Flag-Officer  Foote,  before  he  had 
more  than  one  third  of  the  necessary  crews 
ready  for  them. 

These  seven,  the  Saint  Louis  (afterwards 


THE   GUNBOATS  33 

De  Kalb),  the  Cairo,  Carondelet,  Cincinnati, 
Louisville,  Mound  City,  and  Pittsburg,  were 
all  alike.  The  Saint  Louis,  ,as  Eads  wrote  to 
Lincoln,  when  he  sent  him  a  photograph  of 
her,  "  was  the  first  ironclad  built  hi  America. 
.  .  .  She  was  the  first  armored  vessel  against 
which  the  fire  of  a  hostile  battery  was  di- 
rected on  this  continent ;  and,  so  far  as  I  can 
ascertain,  she  was  the  first  ironclad  that 
ever  engaged  a  naval  force  in  the  world." 
In  reading  the  descriptions  of  them,  and  in 
reading  in  the  naval  histories  of  their  un- 
deniable faults,  it  must  be  remembered 
that  Eads  "  had  no  part  hi  the  modeling  of 
these  boats,  and  is  therefore  relieved  of  all 
responsibility  as  to  their  imperfections." 
They  were  175  feet  long,  51 J  feet  beam. 
Their  flat  sides  sloped  upward  and  inward 
at  an  angle  of  about  35°,  and  the  front  and 
rear  casemates  corresponded  with  the  sides, 
the  stern-wheel  being  entirely  covered  by 
the  rear  casemate.  It  was  a  large  paddle- 
wheel,  placed  forward  of  the  stern  so  as  to 
be  protected.  The  whole  thing  was  like 
a  tremendous  uncovered  box,  with  its  sides 


34  JAMES  B.  EADS 

sloping  up  and  in,  and  containing  the  bat- 
tery, the  machinery,  and  the  paddle-wheel, 
while  the  smoke-stacks  and  the  conical  pilot- 
house stuck  up  out  of  the  top.  Captain 
Mahan  says  that  they  looked  like  gigantic 
turtles.  Underneath  the  water,  they  were 
simply  like  flat-bottomed  scows.  As  they 
were  intended  always  to  fight  bows  on,  they 
were  built  with  that  in  view.  In  front 
they  were  accordingly  armored  two  and  a 
half  inches  over  two  feet  of  solid  oak.  The 
only  other  armor  they  carried  was  abreast 
of  the  boiler  and  engines.  The  stern,  there- 
fore, and  the  greater  part  of  the  sides  were 
decidedly  vulnerable.  Their  armament  con- 
sisted of  three  guns  forward,  four  on  each 
broadside,  and  two  at  the  stern. 

When  Eads  was  given  a  chance  to  alter 
a  boat  from  his  own  designs,  he  made  it  a 
much  better  one  than  these.  It  was  a  boat 
ordered  by  General  Fremont  in  September, 
1861,  in  excess  of  the  government  appropri- 
ation for  the  river  fleet.  This  was  the  same 
snag-boat  which  three  months  before  had 
been  suggested  for  alteration  by  Eads,  and 


THE  GUNBOATS  35 

refused  by  the  army's  agent.  In  this  case, 
as  in  so  many  afterwards  when  Eads  knew 
himself  to  be  right,  he  stuck  persistently  to 
his  own  opinion ;  and  out  of  the  heavy  old 
boat,  despised  and  objected  to  by  so  many 
persons,  he  fashioned  the  "  old  war-horse," 
the  Ben  ton,  which,  slow  as  she  was,  Spears, 
the  naval  historian,  calls  the  most  powerful 
warship  afloat  at  that  date.  As  a  snag-boat, 
formerly  used  by  Eads,  she  had  "had  two 
hulls  so  joined  and  strengthened  that  she 
could  get  the  largest  kind  of  a  cottonwood 
tree  between  them,  hoist  it  out  of  the  mud, 
and  drag  it  clear  of  the  channel."  These 
hulls  were  now  joined  together ;  and  while 
the  boat  was  armored  on  the  same  general 
plan  as  the  seven  contract  gunboats,  she 
was  so  much  more  completely  iron  clad  as 
to  avoid  the  danger  that  they  were  exposed 
to  of  having  their  boilers  burst  and  great 
damage  and  death  caused  thereby.  Her 
tonnage  was  twice  that  of  the  others ;  her 
size  about  200  by  75  feet.  She  was  en- 
tirely iron  clad.  In  her  gun-deck  casemate 
the  twenty  inches  of  timber  under  the  plat- 


36  JAMES  B.  EADS 

ing  had  "  its  grain  running  up  from  the  wa- 
ter instead  of  horizontally,  by  which  means 
[wrote  Eads]  a  ball  will  strike,  as  it  were, 
with  the  grain,  and  then  be  more  readily 
deflected.  On  the  same  principle  that  a 
minie  ball  will  penetrate  five  inches  of  oak, 
crossing  the  grain,  while  it  will  not  enter 
one  inch  if  fired  at  the  end  of  the  timber." 
This  detail  illustrates  the  care  and  interest 
with  which  Eads  built  his  boats. 

The  eight  of  them,  Captain  Mahan  says, 
"formed  the  backbone  of  the  river  fleet 
throughout  the  war,"  and  "  may  be  fairly 
called  the  ships  of  the  line  of  battle  on  the 
"Western  waters."  He  speaks  also  of  their 
"  very  important  services."  This  is  milder 
praise  than  has  been  given  them.  Com- 
mander Stembel  said  that  he  had  heard  them 
called  equal  to  5000  men  each;  Boynton, 
the  naval  historian,  goes  so  far  as  to  say 
that  the  permanent  occupation  of  the  South 
was  rendered  possible  by  the  ironclad  navy 
of  the  Western  waters.  Though  the  naval 
battles  in  the  Atlantic  were  perhaps  more 
brilliant,  he  says,  none,  unless  that  between 


THE  GUNBOATS  37 

the  Merrimac  and  the  Monitor,  had  more 
important  results.  Eads  has  been  called  as 
potent  as  a  great  general  in  clearing  the 
upper  Mississippi.  He  did  not,  to  be  sure, 
build  the  entire  gunboat  fleet,  but  he  did 
build,  as  Captain  Mahan  says,  the  backbone 
of  it;  and  that  the  praises  for  that  fleet, 
which  I  have  quoted,  are  not  altogether  ex- 
travagant, is  further  shown  by  the  com- 
ments of  Mr.  John  Fiske.  He  says,  "  While 
it  was  seldom  that  they  ["  these  formidable 
gunboats"]  could  capture  fortified  places 
without  the  aid  of  a  land  force,  at  the  same 
time  this  combination  of  strength  with  speed 
made  them  an  auxiliary  without  which  the 
greater  operations  of  the  war  could  hardly 
have  been  undertaken." 

These  eight  boats  figured  in  many  a  fight 
on  the  great  river  and  its  branches.  They 
"  were  ever  where  danger  was."  A  month 
and  more  before  the  Merrimac  and  the  Mon- 
itor were  finished,  the  important  capture  of 
Fort  Henry  "  was  a  victory  exclusively  for 
the  gunboats."  It  was  the  Carondelet  that 
ran  the  gauntlet  past  Island  Number  10, 


38  JAMES  B.  EADS 

a  feat  as  full  of  romance  and  daring  as 
any  that  the  Civil  War  tells  us  of.  And 
these  things  were  done  with  vessels  still 
unpaid  for  and  the  personal  property  of 
their  builder.  Their  usefulness  was  a  great 
satisfaction  to  Eads,  and  he  rejoiced,  as 
he  wrote  to  Foote,  with  "  the  prideful  plea- 
sure of  the  poor  armorer  who  forged  the 
sword  that  in  gallant  hands  struck  down 
the  foe." 

When  the  Benton  left  her  dock  for  Cairo, 
Foote  requested  Eads  to  see  her  there  in 
safety.  Eads,  who  was  so  deeply  interested 
in  his  boats  that  on  another  occasion  he  was 
narrowly  prevented  from  going  into  action 
with  one  of  them,  gladly  agreed.  Before 
long  the  Benton  grounded.  As  Eads  was 
merely  a  guest,  and  as  there  were  naval  offi- 
cers aboard,  he  did  not  feel  called  upon  to 
interfere  with  any  suggestions.  But  after 
the  officers  and  crew  had  labored  all  night 
trying  to  float  her,  then  with  his  aptitude 
for  emergencies  he  used  his  scientific  know- 
ledge to  suggest  another  scheme.  The  cap- 
tain at  once  gave  him  leave  to  command  the 


THE   GUNBOATS  39 

entire  crew,  and  by  means  of  hawsers  tied 
to  trees  ashore  and  then  strongly  tightened, 
the  vessel  was  floated.  In  this  case  the  old 
river  man  knew  more  than  the  naval  offi- 
cers. 

In  April,  1862,  the  Navy  Department 
called  Eads  to  Washington  to  make  designs 
for  more  ironclads,  —  or  rather  boats  made 
wholly  of  iron.  These  were  to  be  of  very 
light  draught  and  turreted.  He  submitted 
plans  for  boats  drawing  five  feet.  The  de- 
partment insisted  on  lighter  draught,  but 
still  on  heavy  plating.  So  he  revised  his 
designs  once,  and  then  once  more.  Finally 
the  draught  was  reduced  to  only  three  and 
a  half  feet.  Eads  has  himself  described  his 
going  back  to  his  room  in  the  hotel,  and 
in  a  few  hours  making  over  his  designs. 
When  these  boats  were  finished  they  were 
found  to  draw  even  less  than  had  been  con- 
tracted for,  so  that  extra  armor  was  or- 
dered for  them,  and  three  of  them  ex- 
ceeded the  contract  speed.  At  first  two 
boats  were  ordered,  later  four  others.  For 
the  turrets  Eads  submitted  designs  of  his 


40  JAMES  B.  EADS 

own,  but  as  it  was  then  only  a  month  after 
the  Monitor's  fight,  Ericsson's  turrets  were 
insisted  on  for  the  first  two  boats,  although 
modifications  were  allowed.  As  the  other 
four  had  two  turrets  each,  Eads  was  allowed 
on  two  of  them  to  try  one  turret  of  his  own, 
with  the  guns  worked  by  steam,  on  condi- 
tion of  replacing  them  at  his  own  cost  with 
Ericsson's  in  case  of  failure.  This  was 
the  first  manipulation  of  heavy  artillery  by 
steam.  The  guns  were  fired  every  forty- 
five  seconds,  or  seven  times  as  fast  as  in 
Ericsson's  turrets. 

In  addition  to  the  fourteen  gunboats,  Eads 
also  converted  seven  transports  into  musket- 
proof  "tinclads,"  and  built  four  mortar- 
boats.  "  Such  men,"  says  Boynton,  "  deserve 
a  place  in  history  by  the  side  of  those  who 
fought  our  battles." 

The  career  of  some  of  the  gunboats  sub- 
sequent to  the  war  is  interesting.  In  1880 
the  Chickasaw  and  the  Winnebago,  which 
were  two  of  the  six  iron  boats,  and  both  of 
which  took  part  in  the  naval  campaign  at 
Mobile,  had  come  into  the  hands  of  Peru  ; 


THE  GUNBOATS  41 

and  old  as  they  were,  they  were  used  very 
effectively  against  some  of  the  larger  and 
more  modern  boats  of  the  Chileans. 

During  those  trying  war  times  all  of  Eads's 
tremendous  energy  had  by  no  means  been 
exhausted  by  the  gunboats.  In  more  ways 
than  one  he  had  been  showing  himself  a 
good  citizen  and  a  kind-hearted  man.  Much 
as  his  fortune  had  been  drained  by  the  boats, 
he  still  found  money  to  give  to  the  sufferers 
in  the  war.  Out  of  a  belated  partial  pay- 
ment on  the  Bentoii  he  at  once  sent  money 
to  Foote  for  use  in  relief  work,  and  with 
characteristic  persistence  he  sent  several 
letters  and  telegrams  to  make  sure  of  the 
money's  arriving.  A  month  or  so  later  he 
sent  a  check  from  Washington  to  Saint  Louis 
to  the  Sanitary  Commission,  asking  that  its 
receipt  might  not  be  made  public.  In  the 
letter  sent  with  this  he  speaks  of  the  war  as 
"  an  accursed  contest  between  brothers,"  but 
adds  that  the  "  cause  is  most  worthy  of  the 
sacrifice."  From  the  niece  of  the  Secretary 
of  the  Navy  we  also  find  a  letter  of  acknow- 
ledgment of  money  to  be  used  in  relief. 


42  JAMES  B.  EADS 

But  it  was  not  only  to  the  soldiers  that  he 
showed  his  tenderness  :  to  Foote,  the  gallant 
"  Christian  commander  "  of  his  fleet,  he  sent 
various  friendly  gifts  when  that  brave  man 
lay  dying,  —  grapes  from  his  own  vines,  a 
portrait  he  had  had  painted  of  his  friend. 
And  "even  to  those  on  the  other  side  he 
showed  an  unusual  consideration.  Towards 
the  end  of  the  war  there  seemed  to  be  no 
means  of  feeding  the  many  refugees  in  Saint 
Louis  but  by  levying  a  tax  upon  Southern 
sympathizers.  Eads,  who  foresaw  what  bit- 
terness such  a  course  would  produce,  offered, 
in  the  name  of  a  bank  in  which  he  was  a 
director,  $  1000  to  start  a  subscription  to  be 
used  instead,  and  the  invidious  assessment 
was  never  levied  again. 

To  his  personal  friends  he  was  always 
generous  and  thoughtful,  sending  them  many 
presents,  defending  them  from  misrepresen- 
tation, and  helping  them  in  their  chosen 
careers.  By  means  of  his  influence  and  tact 
he  procured  the  release  of  an  indiscreet  per- 
son who  had  talked  himself  into  McDowell's 
College  prison  as  a  suspected  enemy  to  the 


THE    GUNBOATS  43 

government.  Giving  to  others  seemed  a 
trait  in  Eads's  character  which  afforded  him 
an  intense  pleasure ;  and  though  a  man  of 
great  dignity,  he  used  with  his  intimate 
friends  a  charming  playfulness  and  affection. 
He  could  be  extremely  mild  in  correcting 
faults ;  and  while  he  was  inclined  to  bear 
with  others,  he  could  be  stern.  His  man- 
ners were  rather  those  one  expects  in  a 
European  gentleman  of  leisure  and  high 
breeding,  than  in  a  former  steamboat  clerk 
and  a  man  who  had  worked  hard  most  of 
his  life.  His  hospitality  was  princely.  In 
his  large  house  in  the  suburbs  of  Saint  Louis 
he  received  not  only  the  young  friends  of  his 
five  daughters  and  his  own  friends,  but  also 
officers  of  the  river  fleet  and  of  the  army, 
officers  sent  west  on  inspection  duty,  and 
foreign  officers  following  the  course  of  the 
war  and  of  the  improvements  in  gunboat 
building. 

His  mind  was  as  active  as  his  heart  was 
generous,  and  the  course  of  his  life  mirrored 
that  activity.  Now  he  was  at  home,  now  in 
Washington,  now  at  Cairo  visiting  the  gun- 


44  JAMES  B.  EADS 

boats  to  see  how  they  worked  under  fire. 
In  Washington  he  was  busy  with  plans  and 
projects.  An  intimate  associate  said  of  him 
in  his  later  life  that  he  was  always  inventing 
some  new  gun  or  gun-carriage ;  and  we  may 
be  sure  that  if  he  ever  was  doing  so,  he  was 
in  those  war  times.  Besides  inventing  his 
own,  he  was  also  busy  examining  Ericsson's 
inventions,  in  making  improvements  on 
them,  in  applying  steam  in  novel  ways  to 
the  working  of  artillery  and  to  the  rotating 
and  raising  of  turrets  ;  in  sending  models  of 
his  inventions  here  and  there,  at  home  and 
abroad,  to  Germany,  where  the  Prussian 
minister,  a  friend  with  whom  he  often  dined, 
"  wished  they  could  get  some  of  his  boats  on 
the  Ehine  ; "  having  his  turrets  explained 
at  a  Russian  dinner  in  New  York  or  Wash- 
ington ;  and  receiving  from  the  Navy  De- 
partment an  appointment  as  special  agent 
to  visit  the  navy  yards  in  Europe.  At  home 
he  was  just  as  busy.  With  his  house  so  full 
of  company,  he  nevertheless  found  time 
somewhere  for  solid  reading  apart  from 
his  work  —  the  Attorney-General  sent  him 


THE   GUNBOATS  45 

Cicero's  letters,  and  he  lent  the  Attorney- 
General  King  Alfred's  works.  There  is  a 
curious  interest  in  knowing  what  two  men  so 
engrossed,  and  upon  such  necessary  duties, 
were  reading  at  such  a  time.  While  he 
was  building  the  second  batch  of  gunboats, 
he  wrote  to  Bates  in  a  personal  letter  that 
he  believed  he  had  the  most  complete  and 
convenient  works  in  the  country  for  iron 
boat-building ;  that  there  and  in  other  places 
he  had  as  many  as  seventy  blacksmith  fires 
at  work  for  him,  and  that  his  men  were  all 
sheltered  from  sun  and  rain.  After  those 
boats  were  finished,  he  went  on  planning 
others,  and  we  have  a  letter  from  Farragut 
in  which  the  admiral  asks  if  some  of  them 
are  not  for  his  use  at  Mobile. 

Eads,  by  this  period  in  his  strenuous  life, 
knew  a  great  many  men,  all  of  whom  he 
treated  with  a  uniform  dignity  and  courtesy, 
even  when  they  were  unfriendly,  and  a  few 
of  whom  he  was  on  the  most  intimate  terms 
with.  Among  all  of  them  he  was  admired ; 
perhaps  already  he  was  as  prominent  a  citi- 
zen as  there  was  in  Saint  Louis,  and  as  it  was 


46  JAMES  B.  EADS 

still  in  the  good  old  times  when  the  mayor- 
alty there  was  a  high  honor  to  the  best 
men,  it  was  suggested  to  him  that  he  hold 
the  office.  Nor  was  this  the  first  honor 
offered  to  be  thrust  upon  him ;  early  in  the 
war  Bates  had  wanted  him  appointed  com- 
missary of  subsistence  at  Saint  Louis,  and 
though  it  was  unusual  to  appoint  a  civilian 
to  that  position,  Lincoln  had  been  willing  to 
do  it  to  oblige  Bates, — but  Eads  had  not 
wished  it.  More  than  a  year  later  he  was 
given  a  commission  of  lieutenant  -  colonel 
by  the  governor,  but  he  was  never  sworn 
in.  Like  all  men  in  those  troublous  times, 
he  took  a  peculiar  interest  in  politics ;  and 
on  being  asked  privately  in  a  joint  letter 
from  the  editors  of  three  Saint  Louis  papers 
(two  of  them  German)  exactly  what  his 
politics  were,  he  replied  that  he  was  as 
strongly  in  favor  of  emancipation  as  he  was 
opposed  to  slavery,  and  that  he  believed  in 
no  "  kid-glove  policy ; "  but  he  remarked 
incidentally  that  if  he  were  to  be  offered  the 
mayoralty  he  should  refuse  it. 

His   work   was   for   the   whole   country. 


THE   GUNBOATS  47 

While  he  was  still  too  much  engrossed  with 
his  turrets  and  his  plans  for  new  boats,  he 
fell  very  ill.  Indeed  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion that  he  sacrificed  his  health  to  build  the 
gunboats.  Never  very  robust,  he  was  now 
so  ill  that  eight  doctors  gave  him  up.  His 
indomitable  spirit  pulled  him  through,  but 
he  was  ordered  away  from  his  workshop  to 
Europe,  he  and  his  family.  His  over- 
burden of  labor  had  crushed  him,  —  before 
this  his  eyes  had  been  tired  out.  Bates 
charged  him  to  take  care  of  himself ;  "  the 
country  can't  spare  you,"  he  said  "  and  I 
can't  spare  you." 

Unless  Bates  was  a  prophet,  we  may  well 
think  the  first  of  these  statements  unduly 
strong.  To  be  sure,  when  in  a  crucial  mo- 
ment the  gunboats  were  needed,  and  needed 
quickly,  Eads's  unparalleled  haste  in  build- 
ing them  certainly  did  an  inestimable  service 
to  the  country.  But  so  far  in  his  career,  — 
and  he  was  over  forty,  —  while  he  had  shown 
a  marked  inventive  talent,  he  had  not  as  yet 
made  clear  his  signal  genius  for  engineering. 
And  although  he  had  exhibited  wonderful 


48  JAMES  B.  EADS 

executive  ability  and  such  true  patriotism  as 
made  him  a  valued  citizen,  he  had  still  to 
render  himself  indispensable  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  nation. 


Ill 

THE   BRIDGE 

EADS  was  bred  to  the  Mississippi.  He 
had  mastered  its  secrets  by  hard  experience ; 
he  had  worked  in  successful  opposition  to  its 
great  wayward  forces.  But  he  was  not  to 
be  content  till  he  had  tamed  it,  till  he  had 
saddled  it,  and,  wild  as  it  will  always  be, 
had  made  it  nevertheless  subservient  to  him. 
To  his  quietly  stubborn  spirit  there  was  a 
delightful  invigoration  in  using  his  brain  to 
conquer  the  brute  force  of  this  capricious 
monster.  For  the  river  is  the  grandest 
power' between  our  two  oceans.  Niagara  is 
more  sublime ;  but  Niagara  is  constant,  and 
therefore  its  immense  strength  has  been 
easily  set  to  a  task.  The  Mississippi  is  so 
irregular  that  one  tends  unconsciously  to 
personify  it  by  calling  it  tricky.  To  find 
the  causes  of  its  sudden  changes  one  must 
go  back  hundreds  of  miles  to  the  mountains 


50  JAMES  B.  EADS 

east  and  west.  Seeming  to  delight  in  de- 
struction, it  tears  down  or  eats  away  the 
checks  that  are  put  upon  it.  Only  a  mind 
never  discouraged,  a  mind  capable  of  dis- 
covering and  comprehending  the  laws  that 
after  all  underlie  the  apparently  blind  and 
brutal  jests  of  this  untiring  giant,  can,  by 
the  use  of  those  very  laws,  tame  it.  And 
such  a  mind  Eads  had.  "  That  everlasting 
brain  of  yours  will  wear  out  three  bodies," 
said  one  friend. 

Though  indeed  his  body  was  strong,  with 
iron  muscles  and  a  fierce  nervous  energy, 
yet  it  was  not  a  big  body,  and  his  health 
was  weak.  Again  and  again  he  worked  be- 
yond his  strength,  and  only  on  the  absolute 
order  of  his  doctors  would  he  go  away  from 
his  work  and  rest.  But  he  could  not  en- 
tirely rest.  His  brain  would  work.  In  his 
health  tours  to  Europe  he  was  always  open 
to  new  ideas,  always  studying  new  methods 
to  carry  back  to  his  task.  "  Your  recrea- 
tion," some  one  wrote  him,  "  is  Monitor  dis- 
cussions with  Captain  Ericsson."  Another 
recreation  was  chess.  Had  he  not  elected 


THE  BRIDGE  51 

to  be  the  leading  engineer  of  his  day,  he 
might  have  been  the  chess  champion.  This 
game,  never  one  for  the  slothful  and  un- 
thinking, he  made  even  more  exacting  than 
usual.  He  would  play  several  games  at  the 
same  time ;  or,  without  seeing  the  board 
which  his  opponent  used,  he  would  carry  the 
game  in  his  head.  Though  it  was  his  nature 
not  to  like  to  be  beaten,  yet  he  was  as  kindly 
as  he  was  set  in  his  purpose ;  and  it  was  also 
his  nature  to  take  defeat  gracefully :  defeat 
seldom  came.  "  Never  let  even  a  pawn  be 
taken,"  he  gave  me,  a  small  boy,  as  a  rule 
for  the  game.  Even  in  little  things  he  liked 
thoroughness,  —  a  capacity  for  painstaking 
which  is,  I  think,  characteristic  of  the  "  thor- 
oughbred." 

His  appearance  showed  his  traits.  Not 
tall,  and  rather  slight,  he  was  always  dig- 
nified. His  wide  and  thin-lipped  mouth 
shut  so  emphatically  that  it  made  plain  his 
intention  to  do,  in  spite  of  all,  what  he  be- 
lieved could  and  should  be  done.  Some  one 
said  that  it  was  a  hundred  horse-power 
mouth.  It  admitted  no  trifling.  When  it 


52  JAMES  B.  EADS 

spoke  seriously,  it  spoke  finally.  But  his 
eyes,  with  their  merry  twinkle,  showed  that 
he  could  also  speak  humorously.  He  was 
indeed  a  famous  story-teller,  fond  of  all  sorts 
of  riddles  and  jests,  and  remembering  all  of 
them  he  heard.  He  used  often  to  point  his 
arguments  with  an  anecdote,  always  a  fresh 
one.  Believing  with  Lamb  that  a  man 
should  enjoy  his  own  stories,  he  would  laugh 
at  his  in  a  most  infectious  way,  till  he  was 
red  in  the  face.  Indeed,  he  was  the  larger 
half  of  his  stories.  His  face  was  thoughtful 
and  stern.  Though  he  seldom  found  fault, 
he  never  did  more  than  once  ;  but  he  was  by 
no  means  violent.  His  mildness  was  more 
forcible  than  anger.  He  wore  a  full  beard, 
but  no  mustache,  thus  exhibiting  his  long, 
determined  lip.  At  forty  he  was  already 
bald,  and  after  he  was  sixty  he  always  wore 
indoors  a  black  skull-cap.  Scrupulously 
cleanly,  in  his  dress  he  was  point-device. 
Without  the  least  ostentation,  his  clothes 
were  invariably  faultless.  From  young  man- 
hood he  had  thought  that  it  is  due  to  one's 
self  and  to  one's  friends  to  look  one's  best ; 


THE  BRIDGE  63 

and  he  had  also  realized  the  practical  value 
of  a  good  appearance.  Often  impressing  this 
on  his  wife  and  daughters,  he  would  have 
them  at  all  times  well  dressed.  Really  he 
seems  to  have  been  a  point  too  precise.  He 
was  just  the  opposite  to  those  geniuses  whose 
great  brain  shows  itself  by  a  sloppy  exterior. 
Eads  was  never  sloppy,  even  at  home. 

His  great  brain  showed  itself  in  its  rest- 
less activity,  in  its  grasp  of  laws  and  of  de- 
tails, in  its  fight  to  help  and  to  better  the 
country  and  the  world.  For  it  was  not  only 
the  lusty  pleasure  of  battling  with  Nature 
that  made  him  long  for  another  struggle 
with  the  Mississippi :  he  saw  the  value  there 
was  in  it  to  commerce  and  to  civilization. 
Before  the  war  he  had  long  contended  with 
stubborn  currents,  and  with  ice,  and  by  his 
energy  and  his  talent  for  inventing  new  de- 
vices he  had  become  the  most  successful 
wrecker  on  the  river.  Abandoning  the 
peaceful  but  lively  triumphs  of  snatching 
hulls  and  cargoes  from  the  maw  of  the 
stream,  he  had  offered  the  government  to 
cleanse  its  course  and  thereby  to  increase  its 


54  JAMES  B.  EADS 

safety  and  usefulness.  In  war  times,  owing 
to  his  knowledge  of  the  waterways  and  of 
science,  he  had  been  able  to  build,  with  a 
speed  fairly  romantic,  a  gunboat  fleet  to  pa- 
trol the  Mississippi.  Already  now  greater 
schemes  for  improving  this  central  highway 
of  our  country  were  in  his  mind,  but  as 
yet  the  fullness  of  the  time  was  not  come. 
Still,  he  was  no  longer  merely  the  careful 
son  and  father  striving  to  protect  his  be- 
loved ones  and  with  no  dreams  of  broader 
duties  ;  he  was  no  longer  contented  with 
rose-arbors  for  an  occupation.  The  grim 
war  had  roused  him  ;  his  years  of  rest  were 
over;  he  was  the  well-known  boat-builder, 
—  engineer,  perhaps  some  persons  already 
called  him,  —  and  his  mind  was  teeming  with 
schemes  of  helpfulness.  Yet  his  ambition 
was  not  for  fame,  but  to  do  in  the  perfect 
way  the  work  that  only  he  could  do. 

In  1867  a  grand  convention  for  the  im- 
provement of  the  Mississippi  and  its  tributa- 
ries met  in  Saint  Louis.  Even  then  people 
were  beginning  to  see  vaguely  that  the  Mis- 
sissippi Valley  is  destined  to  be  the  ruling 


THE   BRIDGE  55 

section  of  the  country.  Eads  in  his  speech 
showed  that  he  foresaw  it  plainly.  He 
urged  the  convention  to  persuade  the  gov- 
ernment to  take  steps  to  improve  the  river ; 
showing  that  for  less  money  than  was  paid 
by  the  river  boats  in  three  years  for  insur- 
ance against  obstructions,  those  obstructions 
could  be  removed.  There  was  not  one  of 
them,  he  said,  that  engineering  skill  and 
cunning  could  not  master. 

Two  years  later  he  urged  upon  the  com- 
mercial convention  at  New  Orleans  by  let- 
ter the  importance  of  introducing  iron  boats 
on  the  Mississippi ;  saying  that  it  was  the 
fault  of  the  tariff  on  iron  that  the  saving 
they  would  effect  was  not  taken  note  of. 
Thirty  years  later  this  scheme  has  again 
been  brought  up.  Perhaps  Eads  was  be- 
fore his  time  in  advocating  it.  But  it  shows 
how  he  had  the  interests  of  commerce  at 
heart. 

His  convention  speech  is  a  good  sample 
of  his  style.  He  was  so  painstaking  that 
even  in  private  letters  he  would  insert  words 
and  change  sentences  and  sometimes  rewrite. 


56  JAMES  B.  EADS 

.  There  are  first  draughts  with  excisions  of 
whole  half  pages,  for  he  sought  conciseness. 
He  sought  also  a  certain  rhythm  or  grace  or 
forcefulness,  it  is  hard  to  tell  exactly  what, 
since  in  his  letters  it  often  resulted  in  a 
rather  self-conscious  formality  or  a  stiff 
playfulness,  and  in  his  speeches  in  a  pretti- 
ness  or  a  floweriness  of  style.  He  sought 
too  carefully.  Probably  in  delivery  the 
speeches  sounded  better  than  we  should  im- 
agine. In  reading  them,  they  seem  florid. 
That  was,  however,  the  favorite  style  of  the 
time.  And  while,  by  overdoing  it,  he  often 
seems  to  lose  force,  he  is  almost  always  clear 
and  always  entirely  logical.  In  contrast  to 
his  speeches  his  professional  reports  are 
models :  simple  and  complete,  written  not 
faultlessly  perhaps,  but  with  a  limpidity 
which  makes  one  interested  even  in  dry 
technical  details.  One  of  his  most  marked 
talents,  often  noted,  was  the  ability  to  ex- 
plain an  abstruse  subject  so  that  it  would 
be  quite  clear  to  anybody.  And  this  he 
did  nearly  as  well  in  writing  as  by  word  of 
mouth. 


THE   BRIDGE  57 

He  thus  made  clear  his  remarkable  plans 
for  the  bridge ;  for  in  1867  the  long  talked 
of  bridge  at  Saint  Louis  was  at  last  begun. 

In  1833,  when  Eads  had  arrived  at 
the  town,  it  had  about  10,000  inhabitants. 
Though  already  seventy  years  old,  it  had 
not  advanced  very  far  beyond  its  original 
state  of  a  French  trading-post.  With  the 
introduction  of  steam  and  the  waking  up  of 
the  country,  the  growth  of  Saint  Louis  was 
rapid.  In  1867  it  had  about  100,000  people. 
Despite  a  commanding  situation,  it  could  be 
seen  that  a  struggle  would  have  to  be  made 
for  it  to  maintain  the  leadership  among  the 
river  towns.  As  early  as  1839  there  had 
been  a  project  for  a  highway  bridge ;  and 
we  are  told  that  "the  city  fathers  stood 
aghast  "  at  an  estimated  cost  of  $736,600. 
In  the  following  years  there  were  several 
more  abortive  schemes  for  bridging,  one  of 
which,  it  is  even  said,  would  have  been 
carried  out,  had  not  its  projector  died. 
Perhaps  it  is  as  well  that  he  never  lived  to 
try  it,  for  until  Eads  no  one  seems  to  have 
realized  how  enormous  the  undertaking  was. 


68  JAMES  B.  EADS 

Probably  few  others,  realizing  it,  would  have 
dared  to  go  on. 

In  the  winter  of  1865-66  a  bill  was 
brought  up  in  Congress  to  authorize  the 
bridging  of  the  Mississippi  at  Saint  Louis. 
Dependence  on  ferries  had  become  intoler- 
able to  the  people,  and  often  when  the  river 
was  frozen  even  the  ferries  were  blocked. 
A  bridge  was  felt  to  be  absolutely  indispen- 
sable. However,  the  antagonism  of  rival 
commercial  routes  was  so  powerful  that  the 
bill  was  allowed  to  pass  only  after  it  had 
been  so  amended  that  it  was  supposed  to  re- 
quire an  impracticability.  It  declared  that 
the  central  span  of  the  contemplated  bridge 
must  be  no  less  than  500  feet  long,  nor  its 
elevation  above  the  city  directrix  less  than 
fifty  feet.  It  was  said  at  the  time  "  that  the 
genius  did  not  exist  in  the  country  capable 
of  erecting  such  a  structure." 

Still,  a  span  of  over  500  feet  had  been 
built  in  Holland ;  and  the  fact  that  there 
was  not  a  total  doubt  as  to  the  practicability 
of  doing  as  well  in  the  Mississippi  Valley 
is  shown  by  the  inauguration  of  two  rival 


THE  BRIDGE  59 

bridge  companies  about  a  year  after  the 
passage  of  the  bill.  One  of  these,  which  was 
located  in  Illinois,  after  calling  a  convention 
of  engineers,  who  considered  the  question  for 
ten  days,  without  an  examination  of  Eads's 
plans,  adopted  a  plan  for  a  truss  bridge. 
The  other,  the  Saint  Louis  company,  from 
the  first  had  Eads  as  its  chief  engineer. 
For  another  year  there  was  a  sharp  contest 
carried  on  between  these  two  companies, 
confined,  however,  principally  to  the  courts 
and  the  newspapers,  until  finally  the  Illinois 
company  sold  out  to  the  Saint  Louis  com- 
pany. Had  the  truss  bridge  been  built, 
there  is  no  knowing  how  long  it  might  have 
stood,  for  the  engineer  who  designed  it  did 
not  arrange  to  base  the  foundations  on  the 
bed-rock  of  the  river.  Afterwards  it  was 
shown  how  necessary  it  was  to  do  this ;  but 
at  the  time  many  people  thought  it  quite 
superfluous,  and  on  that,  as  well  as  on  many 
other  points,  Eads  met  with  opposition. 

In  every  case  it  turned  out  that  he  had  been 
right.  No  one  else  knew  so  well  as  he  the 
immense  power  and  the  waywardness  of  the 


60  JAMES  B.  EADS 

Mississippi.  Good  engineers  supposed  that 
the  greatest  imaginable  scour  at  the  river 
bottom  in  extreme  high  water  would  not 
remove  over  twenty-two  feet  of  sand,  and  it 
was  believed  that  there  were  perhaps  one  hun- 
dred feet  of  it  along  the  east  shore.  But  Eads 
had  been  sixty-five  feet  below  the  river's  sur- 
face at  Cairo,  and  there  he  had  found  the 
river  bottom  to  be  a  moving  mass  at  least 
three  feet  deep ;  and  in  cutting  through  the 
frozen  river  to  liberate  his  diving-bell  boats, 
he  had  found  that  the  floating  ice  which  goes 
underneath  solid  ice,  as  well  as  the  rising  or 
"backing-up  "  of  the  water  above  ice-gorges, 
forces  the  undercurrents  lower  than  even  a 
flood  does ;  and  he  had  found  on  cutting  a 
wreck  out  of  the  ice  that  she  had  been  held 
up  by  the  gorged  ice  underneath  her,  which 
must  therefore  have  been  packed  to  the  bot- 
tom. Knowing  all  this  and  much  more 
about  what  goes  on  under  the  turbid  sur- 
face of  the  river,  he  did  not  doubt  that  even 
beneath  100  feet  of  sand  the  bed-rock  might 
at  times  be  laid  bare,  and  he  was  absolutely 
convinced  that  his  bridge  must  be  founded 
on  it. 


THE   BRIDGE  61 

Moreover,  he  saw  that  on  account  of  the 
exceptional  force  of  the  current  in  its  rather 
narrow  bed  at  Saint  Louis,  the  masonry 
piers  of  his  bridge  must  be  made  unusually 
big  and  strong  to  withstand  it.  Since  they 
must  be  so  big  and  sunk  so  very  deep,  it  was 
evident  that  they  would  be  so  costly  that  the 
fewer  there  need  be  of  them  the  better.  The 
central  span  was  required  to  be  500  feet ; 
with  three  spans  about  that  length  the  river 
could  be  crossed,  and  three  spans  would 
require  only  four  piers.  Steel  trusses  500 
feet  long  would  have  to  be  made  extremely 
heavy ;  but  Eads  showed  that  a  steel  arch 
the  same  length,  while  quite  as  strong, 
•would  be  lighter  and  consequently  much 
cheaper.  When  his  opponents  objected  that 
there  was  no  engineering  precedent  for  such 
spans,  while  he  pointed  out  their  mistake, 
at  the  same  time  he  expressed  his  conviction 
that  engineering  precedents  had  nothing  to 
do  with  the  question  of  length  of  span ;  that 
it  was  altogether  a  money  question.  There- 
fore, since  the  cheapest  method  was  to  be 
carefully  sought,  he  determined  upon  arches, 


62  JAMES  B.  EADS 

—  two  abutment  piers,  two  river  piers,  and 
three  arches  of  respectively  502,  520,  and 
502  feet  long. 

There  were  many  opponents  to  this  plan ; 
some  of  them  people  who  would  have  op- 
posed any  bridge,  as,  for  example,  the 
ferry  and  the  transfer  companies.  To  his 
own  company  he  explained  away  every  ob- 
jection that  came  up,  as  he  was  bound  to 
do,  in  view  of  their  confidence  in  him.  He 
made  the  clearest  of  explanations  of  the 
theories  involved;  and  even  such  absurd 
predictions  as  that  his  superstructure  would 
crush  his  huge  stone  piers,  he  took  the 
trouble  to  blast  sarcastically.  To  an  engi- 
neering journal  he  wrote  three  letters  cor- 
recting mistakes  in  its  accounts  of  his  work. 
But  he  seems  to  have  wasted  little  of  his 
energy  in  arguing  with  the  newspaper  pub- 
lic. It  was  a  question  only  of  time  till 
everybody  should  be  convinced. 

The  most  extraordinary  care  and  pains 
were  expended  in  every  direction.  The 
stone,  granite,  and  steel  were  both  hunted 
up  and  tested  by  experts,  and  by  machines 


THE   BRIDGE  63 

specially  devised  in  the  bridge  works,  though 
not  by  Eads  himself.  For  his  assistants  he 
chose  men  who  were  of  real  ability  and  well 
trained,  and  to  them  he  invariably  gave 
great  credit  for  their  part  in  the  work.  The 
plans,  after  being  figured  out  in  detail  by 
them,  were  gone  over  by  the  mathematician 
Chauvenet,  then  chancellor  of  Washington 
University,  who  found  not  one  single  error 
in  them.  Most  of  the  big  work,  such  as  the 
masonry  and  steel,  was  given  out  on  con- 
tract ;  and,  as  was  natural,  delays  by  the 
contractors  often  greatly  delayed  the  pro- 
gress of  the  bridge.  The  whole  work  occu- 
pied seven  years. 

While  Eads  had  promised  the  company 
to  prove  by  careful  experiment,  so  far  as  was 
possible,  everything  connected  with  the 
bridge  that  had  not  already  been  fully 
demonstrated  in  practice,  he  did  not  pre- 
tend that  in  his  main  outlines  he  was  with- 
out some  examples.  It  was  in  his  develop- 
ment of  known  ideas  and  his  expedients  for 
simplification  that  his  genius  perhaps  most 
strikingly  showed  itself.  Again  and  again 


64  JAMES  B.  EADS 

he  contrived  some  device  so  simple  that,  like 
a  great  many  strokes  of  genius,  it  seemed 
that  anybody  should  have  thought  of  it. 
The  massive  piers  were  sunk  to  the  bed-rock 
by  means  of  metal  caissons.  These  were 
adapted  in  design  from  some  he  had  seen  in 
use  in  France,  and  had  examined  during  a 
trip  his  doctors  ordered  him  to  make  in 
1868.  Eads  himself  compared  them  to 
inverted  pans.  They  were  open  at  the  bot- 
tom, but  perfectly  air-tight  everywhere  else. 
They  had  several  important  features  which 
were  entirely  original.  Such  caissons,  sunk 
to  the  bottom,  have  the  masonry  of  the  pier 
built  on  top  of  them  even  while  they  are 
sinking;  and  workmen  inside  them  keep 
removing  the  sand  from  underneath,  and 
throwing  it  under  the  mouths  of  pipes  which 
suck  it  up  to  the  surface  of  the  river.  Evi- 
dently the  caissons  must  be  filled  with  com- 
pressed air  to  equalize  the  external  pressure, 
which  is  constantly  increasing  as  ever  deeper 
water  is  reached;  they  must  also  have  an 
opening  connecting  with  the  surface  ;  and 
to  admit  of  passing  from  the  ordinary  atmos- 


THE  BRIDGE  65 

pliere  to  the  denser  one,  there  must  be  an 
air-lock.  Before  this  bridge  was  built,  the 
air-lock  had  always  been  placed  at  the  top 
of  the  entrance  shaft,  where,  as  the  caisson 
sank  and  the  shaft  was  lengthened,  it  had  to 
be  constantly  moved  up.  Eads  placed  it  in 
the  air-chamber  of  the  caisson  itself,  where 
it  never  had  to  be  moved ;  and  thus,  as  the 
shaft  was  not  filled  with  compressed  air,  less 
was  needed,  and  there  was  less  danger  of 
leaks.  Another  of  his  useful  innovations 
was  to  build  his  shaft  of  wood,  and  another 
was  to  put  a  spiral  stairway  into  it.  Indeed, 
in  the  last  pier  he  put  an  elevator  into  the 
shaft.  Moreover,  he  was  the  first  person  to 
run  his  pipes  for  discharging  the  sand,  not 
through  the  shaft,  but  through  the  masonry 
itself;  and  he  invented  a  very  simple  and 
effectual  new  sand-pump,  which  was  worked 
by  natural  forces  without  machinery.  All 
these  improvements  and  various  others  seem 
to  have  been  thought  of  so  easily,  that  we 
are  inclined  to  wonder  why  clumsier  meth- 
ods had  ever  been  in  use.  He  described 
them  all  in  his  reports  and  his  letters  about 


66  JAMES  B.  EADS 

the  bridge  in  a  style  which  is  not  only  clear 
but  actually  fascinating  even  to  a  person 
who  has  scant  scientific  knowledge  or  taste. 
One  of  the  piers  was  sunk  110  feet  below 
the  surface  of  the  river,  through  ninety  feet 
of  gravel  and  sand.  Eads's  theories  were 
justified  by  finding  the  bed-rock  so  smooth 
and  water-worn  as  to  show  that  at  times  it  had 
been  uncovered.  This  was  the  deepest  sub- 
marine work  that  had  ever  been  done,  and 
Eads  tells  us  in  his  reports  many  interesting 
experiments  he  made  in  the  air-chambers. 
In  their  dense  atmosphere  a  candle  when 
blown  out  would  at  once  light  again.  This 
was  before  the  days  of  electric  lighting : 
otherwise  we  may  be  sure  that  that  would 
have  been  used,  as  so  many  other  modern 
inventions  were.  For  the  first  time  in  any 
such  work,  the  last  pier  sunk  had  telegraphic 
communications  with  the  offices  on  shore ; 
which  must  have  been  comforting  to  work- 
men starting  out  to  their  labor  in  the  dead 
of  winter  with  two  weeks'  provisions.  The 
dense  air  of  the  chambers  caused  not  only 
discomfort  to  the  ears,  but  also  in  the  case 


THE  BRIDGE  67 

of  some  of  the  workmen  a  partial  paralysis. 
There  was  no  previous  experience  to  go  by, 
but  every  precaution  seen  to  be  necessary 
was  taken;  the  hours  of  work  were  made 
very  short,  the  elevator  was  provided,  med- 
ical attendance  and  hospital  care  were  given 
free.  After  the  first  disasters  no  man  was 
allowed  to  work  in  the  air-chambers  without 
a  doctor's  permit.  And  it  is  known  that  in 
helping  the  sufferers  with  his  private  means, 
Eads  was  as  charitable  as  ever.  Out  of  352 
men  employed  in  the  various  air-chambers, 
12  died.  Eads,  with  his  wonted  generosity 
of  praise,  printed  in  his  yearly  report  the 
names  of  all  the  men  who  worked  in  the 
deepest  pier  from  its  beginning  till  it  touched 
bed-rock.  It  is  interesting  to  note  in  passing 
that  of  all  the  workmen  in  the  blacksmith's 
yard  only  the  head  smith  himself  could  lift 
a  greater  weight  than  the  designer  of  the 
bridge. 

The  superstructure  consisted  mainly  of 
three  steel  arches,  by  far  the  longest  that 
had  ever  been  constructed  ;  the  first  to  dis- 
pense with  spandrel  bracing ;  and  the  first 


68  JAMES  B.  EADS 

to  be  built  of  cast-steel.  The  "  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica  "  called  them  "  the  finest  example 
of  a  metal  arch  yet  erected."  They  were 
built  out  from  the  piers  from  both  ends  to 
meet  in  the  middle  $  and  were  put  into 
place  entirely  without  staging  from  below, 
—  once  again,  the  first  instance  of  such  a 
proceeding.  All  the  necessary  working  plat- 
forms and  machinery  were  suspended  from 
temporary  towers  built  on  the  piers;  and 
thus  while  the  arches  were  being  put  up, 
navigation  below  was  not  interfered  with. 
This  throwing  across  of  the  500-foot  arches 
without  the  use  of  false  works  has  been 
ranked  with  the  sinking  of  the  piers 
"  through  a  hundred  feet  of  shifting  quick- 
sands," as  producing  "  some  of  the  most  dif- 
ficult problems  ever  attempted  by  an  engi- 
neer." One  problem,  caused  by  the  fault 
of  the  contractors,  presented  itself  when  they 
came  to  insert  the  central  tubes  to  close  the 
arches.  The  tubes  were  found  to  be  two 
and  a  half  inches  too  long  to  go  in,  although 
they  would  be  only  the  required  length 
when  they  were  in.  It  was  left  for  Eads 


THE   BRIDGE  69 

to  insert  them.  Shortening  them  would  of 
course  have  lowered  the  arch.  Eads,  who 
was  just  starting  for  London  on  financial 
business  of  the  bridge,  cut  the  tubes  in  half, 
joining  them  by  a  plug  with  a  right  and  left 
screw.  Then  he  cut  off  their  ends,  for  the 
plug  would  make  them  any  required  length 
by  inserting  or  withdrawing  the  screws  a 
little.  Then  he  went  away.  As  it  would 
have  been  much  cheaper  not  to  use  this  de- 
vice, his  assistants  tried  for  hours  to  shrink 
the  tubing  by  ice  applications,  and  thus  to 
get  the  arches  closed ;  and  there  is  a  popu- 
lar tradition  in  Saint  Louis  that  they  suc- 
ceeded ;  but  it  was  excessively  hot  weather, 
and  they  did  not  succeed.  The  screw-plug 
tubes,  of  course,  were  easily  put  in.  Any 
part  of  this  steel  work  can  be  at  any  time 
safely  removed  and  replaced,  —  another 
structural  feature  original  in  this  bridge. 

Although  Eads  took  care  to  protect  his 
special  innovations  by  patent,  he  was  most 
willing  to  explain  them  with  care  to  other 
engineers  and  to  have  others  profit  by  his 
improvements  ;  and  several  of  the  mechani- 


70  JAMES  B.  EADS 

cal  novelties  of  his  bridge  are  now  in  the 
commonest  use,  and  have  been  taken  advan- 
tage of  even  in  such  famous  structures  as 
the  Brooklyn  Bridge. 

During  the  building  of  the  bridge  Eads 
spent  many  months  in  enforced  absence, 
but  while  in  Europe  he  always  had  his  labor 
in  mind,  and,  as  I  have  said,  brought  home 
from  France  one  of  his  most  useful  appli- 
ances. During  his  absence  he  left  abso- 
lutely trustworthy  and  efficient  engineers  in 
charge  of  the  work,  and  before  leaving 
home  he  provided  for  accidents  that  might 
occur.  So  much  work  was  done  in  the  win- 
ter that  great  barriers  had  to  be  built  to 
keep  it  clear  of  floating  ice.  One  curious 
detail  connected  with  the  bridge  is  that  the 
Milwaukee,  one  of  the  double-turreted  gun- 
boats which  Eads  had  built  from  his  own 
plans,  and  which  had  been  with  Farragut  at 
Mobile,  was  bought  now  from  a  wrecking 
company,  and  her  iron  hull  used  in  making 
the  caissons ;  so  that  her  usefulness  still 
continued  in  peace  as  in  war. 

It  has  been  said  of  Eads  that  he  grappled 


THE   BRIDGE  71 

with  great  problems  in  engineering,  and 
solved  them  as  easily  as  a  boy  subtracts  two 
from  six.  While  this  is  true,  it  must  not 
be  forgotten  that  he  had  not  the  school- 
training  of  an  engineer.  Nothing  is  more 
untrue  than  the  statement  that  he  was,  like 
de  Lesseps,  only  a  contractor.  He  was  a 
very  unusually  brilliant  engineer,  and  his 
ignorance  of  the  higher  mathematics  served 
to  show  his  brilliancy  the  more  clearly. 
Some  persons  have  said  that  his  chief  talent 
was  in  explaining  abstruse  reasonings  simply ; 
but  an  engineer  has  told  me  that  he  thought 
Eads's  chief  talent  was  his  ability  to  arrive 
by  some  rough  means  at  a  certain  conclu- 
sion to  a  given  problem,  which  conclusion 
would  in  every  instance  be  approximately 
the  same  that  better  trained  mathematicians 
would  reach  by  mathematics. 

By  the  time  the  bridge  was  finished,  in- 
deed from  the  time  (1868)  when  his  first 
report  for  it  made  a  decided  stir  in  the  scien- 
tific world,  both  at  home  and  abroad,  Eads 
was  a  very  well-known  engineer.  In  that 
same  year  a  visit  to  Europe  for  his  health's 


72  JAMES  B.  EADS 

sake  gave  him  the  opportunity  to  interview 
a  French  steel  company,  through  whom  he 
met  a  famous  bridge-builder,  and  was  led  to 
examine  the  piers  of  the  bridge  then  being 
constructed  at  Vichy ;  and  it  was  there  that 
he  found  his  new  ideas  for  caissons.  Going 
home,  by  way  of  England,  he  explained  his 
plans  to  the  engineers  there,  and  was  by 
them  proposed  as  a  member  of  the  Royal 
Society.  Even  at  home,  in  his  own  adopted 
State,  he  was  not  without  recognition ;  for 
in  1872  the  University  of  Missouri  con- 
ferred upon  him  the  honorary  degree  of 
LL.  D.  From  the  general  of  engineers  he 
received  a  request  for  suggestions  for  im- 
provements in  guns  ;  and  from  his  work  on 
the  subject  of  Naval  Defenses  it  is  plain 
that  his  mind  still  found  time  to  run  on  this 
favorite  topic. 

In  1874  the  bridge  was  finished.  After 
it  had  satisfactorily  stood  the  severe  tests 
put  upon  it,  it  was  formally  opened  on  the 
4th  of  July.  The  celebrations  of  that  day 
were  the  first  public  outburst  of  approval 
given  to  Eads's  work.  And  to-day  the 


THE   BRIDGE  73 

strong  and  graceful  bridge  stands  as  his 
most  beautiful  and  lasting  monument.  And 
as  even  the  great  tornado  of  1896  was  un- 
able to  do  the  piers  any  serious  damage, 
they  are  likely  to  last  indefinitely,  and  thus 
make  the  bridge  "endure,"  as  its  builder 
said,  "  as  long  as  it  is  useful  to  man." 

To  Saint  Louis  it  has  been  so  useful  that 
while  on  the  one  hand  the  growth  of  the 
city  was  the  cause  of  its  being  built,  on  the 
other  it  has  been  one  great  cause  of  the  con- 
tinued growth  and  prosperity  of  the  city. 
But  it  had  even  broader  results  than  that. 
"  It  made  a  radical  change  in  the  conditions 
of  transportation  East  and  West,  and  it 
made  possible  the  Memphis  bridge  and  the 
future  New  Orleans  bridge." 

And  in  another  direction  yet  it  is  pe- 
culiarly important.  In  bridge-building  it 
marks  an  era,  not  only  because  of  its 
strength  and  beauty  and  the  daring  of  its 
design,  but  also  because  of  its  many  labor- 
saving  devices,  the  inventions  of  a  thor- 
oughly practical  mind.  A  distinguished 
engineer  calls  it  "a  great  pioneer  in  the 


74  JAMES  B.  EADS 

art  of  sinking  deep  foundations  and  building 
spans  over  wide  stretches  of  space,  that  as- 
tonished in  its  construction  the  entire  civil- 
ized world."  London  "  Engineering  "  chose 
it,  while  building,  as  preeminently  the  "  most 
highly  developed  type  of  bridge ;  "  and  says, 
"  In  that  work  the  alliance  between  the  the- 
orist and  the  practical  man  is  complete." 
In  Eads  it  finds  its  long-sighed-for  dream, 
combining  the  highest  powers  of  modern 
analysis  with  the  ingenuity  of  the  builder. 


IV 

THE   JETTIES 

THE  Mississippi  River  is  a  great  antimo- 
nopolist.  As  more  and  more  railways  have 
been  built  it  has  been  less  and  less  used. 
And  yet,  because  it  drains  almost  every  cor- 
ner of  a  valley  which  comprises  over  one 
third  of  the  whole  United  States,  it  affords 
means  of  transportation  to  an  immense  area ; 
and  since  it  cannot  be  controlled  by  any  one 
company  or  group  of  companies,  its  freight 
rates  can  hardly  be  arbitrarily  fixed.  Still, 
so  long  as  there  are  impediments  to  its  free 
navigation  in  the  shape  of  floods  and  bars, 
it  cannot  be  depended  on  for  shipping,  and 
the  magnificent  opportunities  it  should  offer 
to  commerce  are  lessened.  The  vastest 
river  system  in  the  world,  it  shows  in  its 
various  parts  great  contrasts.  One  large 
tributary  flowing  from  the  Alleghanies,  one 
from  the  Rockies,  one  from  the  north, 


76  JAMES  B.  EADS 

others  from  the  southwestern  plains,  are  each 
able  to  contribute  their  various  products  of 
grain,  lumber,  cattle,  cotton,  fruits,  and  so 
on.  Some  branches  freeze  every  winter; 
others  never  do.  Some  are  clear,  others 
silt  -  bearing.  From  about  Cairo  it  flows 
southward  through  the  greater  delta,  or  land 
built  up  by  its  own  action  in  ages  past, 
and  in  all  this  part  of  its  course  both  banks 
and  bottom  are  of  yielding  alluvion.  For 
some  hundreds  of  miles  "  the  crookedest  of 
great  rivers,' '  it  varies  frequently  in  width 
and  velocity  and  is  full  of  shoals ;  then  for 
hundreds  more,  though  uniform  in  width,  it 
often  rises  higher  than  its  shores,  and  is 
confined  in  artificial  levees,  which  it  contin- 
ually breaks  down.  Finally,  below  New  Or- 
leans, growing  more  sluggish,  and  dividing 
into  several  mouths,  or  "  passes,"  it  wanders 
through  tracts  of  waste  marsh-lands  into 
the  gulf,  which  it  colors  brown  for  miles 
around.  Blocking  the  end  of  each  shallow 
mouth  there  was  formerly  a  sand-bar ;  and 
these  obstructions  to  navigation  were  the 
despair  of  the  river  commerce,  and  no  less 


THE    JETTIES  77 

the  despair  of  the  government  in  its  attempts 
to  remove  them. 

Every  one  interested  in  trade  or  shipping 
realized  what  a  very  serious  hindrance  to  the 
usefulness  of  the  Mississippi  these  choked- 
up  mouths  were,  but  no  one  realized  it  better 
than  Eads.  Understanding  that  the  great 
valley  is  capable  of  supporting  400,000,- 
000  people,  and  intent  on  doing  all  in  his 
power  for  good,  even  before  he  had  com- 
pleted the  bridge  he  was  studying  the  pro- 
blem of  opening  the  river.  Its  improvement 
and  the  welfare  of  its  millions  of  people  were 
cherished  objects  of  his  life.  For  some  men 
one  great  undertaking  at  a  time  is  enough, 
but  Eads's  energies  were  such  that  his  works 
overlapped  one  another.  It  is  hard  to  see 
how  one  man  can  have  time,  even  if  he  has 
brains,  to  do  all  he  did.  But  apparently  he 
never  lived  an  idle  day.  The  bridge,  with 
its  many  extraordinary  solutions  of  new  pro- 
blems, made  its  builder's  permanent  repu- 
tation. At  the  particular  request  of  West 
Point  he  had  supplied  that  institution  with 
writings,  diagrams,  and  models.  And  so 


78  JAMES  B.  EADS 

far  afield  had  his  fame  spread  that  on  one 
of  his  many  trips  abroad,  he  made  plans, 
at  the  request  of  the  Sultan's  grand  vizier, 
for  an  iron  bridge  over  the  Bosphorus.  A 
change  in  viziers,  however,  prevented  its  be- 
ing built. 

It  seems  as  if  the  river-mouth  problem 
had  not  always  been  so  difficult.  Still,  Eads 
showed  that  the  bars  were  inevitable ;  and 
it  is  probably  only  because,  with  the  growing 
population  and  trade  of  the  central  States, 
the  need  for  an  outlet  was  greater,  that  the 
problem  seemed  more  complicated.  More- 
over, ocean  vessels  were  increasing  in  size 
and  draught,  which  also  made  an  adequate 
channel  more  desirable.  Although  the 
blockade  had  forced  the  construction  of 
several  expensive  lines  of  railway,  yet  it  was 
impossible  to  carry  all  the  products  of  the 
valley  by  rail.  Millions  of  dollars'  worth  of 
merchandise  were  delayed  at  the  bars.  As 
early  as  1726  attempts  had  been  made  to 
deepen  the  channels  through  the  river's 
mouths  by  harrowing.  But  the  first  gov- 
ernment effort  was  in  1837,  when  an  ap- 


THE    JETTIES  79 

propriation  was  made  for  a  survey  and  for 
dredging  with  buckets.  Again  in  1852 
another  appropriation  was  made;  and  a 
board,  appointed  by  the  War  Department, 
recommended,  — 

1.  Stirring  up  the  bottom. 

2.  Dredging. 

3.  If  both  these  methods  failed,  the  con- 
struction of  parallel  jetties  "five  miles  in 
length,  at  the  mouth  of  the  South  West 
Pass,  to  be  extended  into  the  gulf  annually, 
as  experience  should  show  to  be  necessary." 

4.  "  Should  it  then  be  needed,  the  lateral 
outlets  should  be  closed." 

5.  Should   all   these    fail,   a   ship    canal 
might  be  made. 

Dredging  by  stirring  the  bottom  was  tried, 
and  produced  a  depth  of  eighteen  feet. 
Three  years  later  this  depth  had  entirely 
disappeared.  In  1856  an  appropriation  was 
made  for  jetties,  and  a  contract  for  their  con- 
struction entered  into,  but  the  jetties  were 
never  completed.  Later  than  that  dredging 
was  tried  again.  Up  to  1875  more  than 
eighteen  feet  of  depth  had  never  been  ob- 


80  JAMES  B.  EADS 

tained,  and  even  that  could  not  be  steadily 
preserved.  Channels,  opened  in  low  water, 
were  quickly  filled  up  with  sediment  in  high 
water,  and  sometimes  a  severe  storm  would 
wash  in  enough  sand  from  the  gulf  to  undo 
the  result  of  months  of  dredging. 

As  early  as  1832  a  ship  canal  near  Fort 
Saint  Philip,  which  should  cut  through  the 
river  bank  out  to  the  gulf,  had  been 
planned,  and  this  solution  had  been  ap- 
proved of  by  the  Louisiana  legislature. 
That  idea  had  been  revived  from  time  to 
time.  And  there  had  also  more  than  once 
been  new  recommendations  made  for  jet- 
ties, which  by  narrowing  the  channel  should 
deepen  it.  Finally  Congress  ordered  sur- 
veys and  plans  for  the  canal,  and  then  ap- 
pointed a  board  not  only  to  report  on  them, 
but  also  to  ascertain  the  feasibility  of  im- 
proving the  channel  of  one  of  the  natural 
outlets  of  the  river.  In  1874  this  board  re- 
ported in  favor  of  the  canal,  and  against  the 
idea  of  jetties,  which,  in  its  opinion,  could 
hardly  be  built,  could  not  be  maintained,  and 
would  be  excessively  costly. 


THE  JETTIES  81 

This,  then,  was  the  situation  when  Eads 
appeared  on  the  scene:  "scratching  and 
scraping"  were  going  on  in  South  West 
Pass,  but  were  doing  little  real  and  no  last- 
ing good;  the  government  engineers  had 
declared  themselves  in  favor  of  a  canal ;  and 
though  in  some  quarters  jetties  had  been 
advocated,  scarcely  any  one  thought  they 
could  be  built,  or  that  if  they  were  they 
would  last,  or  that  they  would  do  any  good. 
Eads,  however,  understood  the  river  like  a 
book,  and  he  had  studied  this  particular  sub- 
ject. He  now  came  forward  publicly,  offer- 
ing not  only  to  build  and  to  maintain  jet- 
ties which  would  insure  a  twenty-eight  foot 
channel,  but  to  do  all  this  for  less  than  half 
the  cost  the  board  had  estimated,  and  on  a 
contract  which  should  provide  for  his  being 
paid  only  in  case  he  succeeded.  From  this 
remarkable  offer  his  own  confidence  in  his 
plans  may  be  inferred.  A  purpose  which  he 
had  reasoned  out  as  practical  became  an  in- 
spiration to  him  which  nothing  could  shake, 
for  his  courage  equaled  his  convictions. 

But  so  bold  was  his  proposition  that  he 


82  JAMES  B.  EADS 

was  considered  a  wild  enthusiast.  Never  at 
a  loss  to  solve  any  problem,  again,  as  when 
he  planned  the  bridge,  he  undertook  to  do 
what  was  commonly  held  to  be  impossible. 
Of  course,  all  the  backers  of  the  canal  scheme 
opposed  him  bitterly.  New  Orleans  was  of 
that  faction.  Saint  Louis,  on  the  other  hand, 
upheld  him  because  of  his  personal  popular- 
ity and  his  signal  success  with  the  bridge. 
The  army  engineers  were  against  him  as  a 
civil  engineer.  Thus  the  controversy  was 
sectional,  personal,  and  professional.  Up 
to  this  time  the  government  had  invariably 
intrusted  all  works  of  river  and  harbor  im- 
provement to  the  military  engineers  ;  and  to 
hand  over  the  most  important  one  it  had 
ever  undertaken  to  a  private  citizen,  and  to 
permit  him  to  apply  a  method  that  had  just 
been  condemned  in  a  report  signed  by  six 
out  of  seven  of  the  most  distinguished  army 
engineers,  met  with  decided  opposition.  So 
the  government  hesitated.  Certainly  this 
was  a  proposal  to  make  them  consider,  pro- 
mising, as  it  did,  an  open  river  mouth,  at  a 
cost  much  lower  than  that  of  the  canal,  and 


THE    JETTIES  83 

in  case  of  failure  leaving  the  total  loss  to 
fall  upon  the  contractor.  Besides,  several 
eminent  civil  engineers  supported  Eads's 
theory.  The  House,  nevertheless,  passed 
the  canal  bill ;  but  the  Senate,  more  thor- 
ough, after  calling  Eads  and  two  of  his 
principal  opponents  to  state  their  views  be- 
fore a  committee,  passed  a  bill  appointing  a 
commission  to  reconsider  the  entire  subject 
once  more.  The  discussion  before  the  Sen- 
ate committee  was  one  of  the  crises  in  Eads's 
life.  The  fate  of  the  jetty  enterprise  hung 
on  the  outcome  of  it.  Fortunately  for  him- 
self and  for  the  good  of  the  country,  he  was 
a  most  magnetic  and  persuasive  man.  His 
theories  and  arguments  were  sound  and 
logical,  his  experience  of  the  river  was  vast ; 
and  beyond  his  aptitude  for  making  techni- 
cal reasoning  simple  and  clear,  his  skill  as  a 
diplomatist  was  equal  to  his  ability  as  an 
engineer. 

So  the  commission  was  appointed;  and, 
ultimately,  on  account  of  the  far-reaching 
importance  of  the  question  of  river-mouth 
improvement,  its  members  decided  to  go  to 


84  JAMES  B.  EADS 

Europe  to  inquire  into  the  matter.  About 
the  same  time,  and  for  the  same  purpose, 
Eads  also  went  abroad,  and  while  there  he 
made  a  careful  study  of  the  works  at  the 
mouths  of  the  Danube,  the  Rhone,  and  sev- 
eral other  European  rivers.  What  he  saw 
there  served  only  to  strengthen  his  confi- 
dence in  his  own  plans.  When  he  returned 
home,  there  had  been  a  noteworthy  change 
in  public  sentiment.  Though  there  still  re- 
mained many  either  prejudiced  or  honest 
enemies  to  his  plan,  and  although  the  news- 
papers were  still  noisy  with  their  cheap  and 
ignorant  opposition,  the  country  at  large 
and  Congress  were  inclined  to  accept  the 
offer,  which  promised  them  so  much  at  no 
risk  at  all. 

The  commission,  returning  too  from  Eu- 
rope, where  it  had  made  as  careful  investi- 
gations as  those  of  Eads,  reported,  by  a  ma- 
jority of  six  to  one,  in  favor  of  trying  jetties 
in  the  South  Pass.  This  pass,  the  smallest 
of  the  three  mouths,  had  a  depth  of  only 
eight  feet  on  its  bar,  and  had  besides  a  shoal 
at  its  head.  The  South  West  Pass,  the  one 


THE    JETTIES  85 

which  Eads  had  proposed  to  use,  is  not  only 
two  or  three  times  as  big,  both  in  width  and 
in  volume  of  water,  but  it  Jiad  fourteen  feet 
on  the  bar,  and  no  shoal  at  its  head.  Eads 
argued  and  implored  with  all  his  strength 
to  be  allowed  to  use  the  larger  pass,  as  the 
only  one  adequate  to  the  demands  of  com- 
merce ;  and  so  convincing  were  his  reasons 
that  the  House  passed  a  bill  which  called 
for  jetties  in  the  larger  pass.  But  the  Sen- 
ate, again  more  conservative,  was  cautious 
in  this  experiment,  and  insisted  on  the  small 
pass.  Finally,  the  bill  went  through,  and 
the  grant  was  made  for  the  improvement  of 
South  Pass.  And  notwithstanding  the  con- 
siderable difference  in  size,  as  well  as  prelim- 
inary conditions  altogether  less  promising 
than  in  the  pass  Eads  had  asked  for,  still, 
the  depth  of  thirty  feet  was  to  be  obtained, 
—  the  same  result  under  harder  circum- 
stances. The  payment  promised,  however, 
was  not  increased  with  the  difficulty  ;  but  on 
the  contrary  was  to  be  a  good  deal  less  than 
the  estimate  of  the  commission.  The  terms, 
which  required  certain  specified  depths  and 


86  JAMES  B.  EADS 

widths  of  channel  to  be  obtained  and  then 
maintained  during  twenty  years,  were  so 
arranged  that  Eads  should  not  receive  any 
part  of  his  payment  till  after  the  work 
covered  by  that  part  had  been  finished  and 
approved. 

Hard  as  these  conditions  were,  they  were 
based  on  his  own  proposal,  and  he  was  glad 
even  on  such  terms  to  undertake  the  great 
work  he  had  longed  to  do.  He  at  once 
busied  himself  in  raising  money  for  begin- 
ning the  Jetties,  and  here  again  his  peculiar 
talents  helped  him.  One  of  his  friends  has 
said,  "  His  powers  of  persuasion,  his  charm 
of  address,  and  the  magnetism  of  his  per- 
sonality opened  the  hearts  and  purses  of 
whomever  he  pleaded  with  in  support  of  his 
engineering  devices.  He  was  a  most  lov- 
able man."  Moreover,  he  was  an  excellent 
business  man.  He  had  indeed  a  marvelous 
faculty  for  obtaining  funds  with  which  to 
carry  on  his  works ;  and  in  that  time  of 
financial  distress  such  a  faculty  was  very 
necessary. 

The  theory  on  which  he  based  his  jetties 


THE   JETTIES  87 

was  really  extremely  simple.  He  said  that, 
other  things  being  equal,  the  amount  of  sed- 
iment which  a  river  can  carry  is  in  direct 
proportion  to  its  velocity.  When,  for  any 
reason,  the  current  becomes  slower  at  any 
special  place,  it  drops  part  of  its  burden  of 
sediment  at  that  place,  and  when  it  becomes 
faster  again  it  picks  up  more.  Now,  one 
thing  that  makes  a  river  slower  is  an  in- 
crease of  its  width,  because  then  there  is 
more  frictional  surface ;  and  contrariwise, 
one  of  the  things  that  make  it  faster  is  a 
narrowing  of  its  width.  Narrow  the  Mis- 
sissippi then,  at  its  mouth,  said  Eads,  and  it 
will  become  swifter  there,  and  consequently 
it  will  remove  its  soft  bottom  by  picking  up 
the  sediment  (of  which  it  will  then  hold 
much  more),  and  by  carrying  it  out  to  the 
gulf,  to  be  lost  in  deep  water  and  swept 
away  by  currents;  and  thus,  he  said,  you 
will  have  your  deep  channel.  In  other 
words,  if  you  give  the  river  some  assistance 
by  keeping  its  current  together,  it  will  do 
all  the  necessary  labor  and  scour  out  its  own 
bottom. 


88  JAMES  B.  EADS 

Today,  since  this  theory  has  been  proved, 
it  seems  as  simple  as  A  B  C.  And  it  is 
almost  impossible  to  believe  what  opposi- 
tion it  then  aroused.  People  were  not  only 
set  on  blocking  the  undertaking,  but  they 
were  actually  ignorant  enough  to  deny  that 
the  velocity  of  water  had  any  connection 
with  its  sediment-carrying  power.  Even  if 
the  narrowing  process  should  happen  to  give 
a  channel  through  the  present  bar,  they 
said,  a  new  one  would  presently  form  be- 
yond, and  so  the  jetties  would  have  to  be 
extended  every  year. 

However,  Eads  had  his  contract  and  his 
backers  and  his  ideas  and  his  faith  in  them ; 
and  he  set  to  work  on  the  little  pass.  The 
actual  delta  of  the  Mississippi  consists  of 
nothing  but  water,  marsh,  and  some  sandy 
soil  bearing  willows.  At  the  sea  end  of 
South  Pass  Eads  extended  the  low  banks 
out  over  the  bar,  by  driving  rows  of  guide- 
piles  and  sinking  willow  mattresses  close 
alongside  them  on  the  riverside.  The  mat- 
tresses were  sunk  in  tiers,  and  each  tier  was 
weighted  well  with  rock,  put  in  as  soon  as 


THE    JETTIES  89 

each  mattress  was  in  position.  As  usual  he 
invented  many  of  the  requisite  mechanical 
appliances  and  contrivances  himself,  and 
generally  such  good  ones  that  his  methods 
came  to  take  the  place  of  earlier  ones.  The 
South  Pass  was  not  only  the  smallest  and 
shallowest  of  the  mouths,  but  it  was  besides 
more  difficult  than  the  other  two  in  having 
a  bar  at  its  head  as  well  as  at  its  sea  end. 
And  although  by  his  contract  Eads  was  not 
required  to  remove  that  bar,  by  the  exigen- 
cies of  the  case  he  was.  Like  the  other  it 
had  to  be  attacked  with  water,  guided  by 
dikes  and  dams,  which  were  similar  in  con- 
struction to  the  two  parallel  banks,  the  jet- 
ties proper.  The  scheme  was  always  to 
force  the  river  itself  to  do  all  the  real  work  ; 
and  though  there  was,  to  be  sure,  a  good 
deal  of  planning  and  building,  the  main 
idea,  as  already  explained,  is  exceedingly 
simple.  Eads  never  pretended  to  have  ori- 
ginated this  idea.  He  had  studied  many 
jetties  in  Europe.  He  had  had  the  eye 
to  see  that  they  could  be  adapted  to  the 
Mississippi,  and  the  skill  to  adapt  them. 


90  JAMES  B.  EADS 

For  simple  as  the  bald  theory  is,  there  was 
need  of  the  nicest  appreciation  of  laws  and 
forces  in  applying  it,  and  the  result  has 
been  called  the  greatest  engineering  feat 
ever  accomplished.  The  problem  of  making 
the  quantity  of  water  needed  run  up  into 
the  smallest  pass  "  through  a  narrow,  arti- 
ficially contracted  channel,  located  immedi- 
ately between  two  great  natural  outlets,"  — 
this  problem  being  complicated  by  many 
"  occult  conditions,"  —  has  been  called,  by 
no  mean  engineer,  perhaps  the  most  diffi- 
cult problem  ever  dealt  with  successfully. 
"  There  is  no  instance,  indeed,  in  the  world 
where  such  a  vast  volume  of  water  is  placed 
under  such  absolute  and  permanent  control 
of  the  engineer,  through  methods  so  econo- 
mic and  simple." 

To  the  non-mechanical  mind  the  control 
of  such  a  multitude  of  abstruse,  minute,  and 
exact  details  as  combine  in  the  making  of  a 
bridge  seems  perhaps  more  marvelous  than 
the  mere  bending  of  nature's  forces  to  serve 
the  ends  of  man.  In  Eads  the  power  to  do 
both  existed. 


THE   JETTIES  91 

On  piles  in  the  marsh  houses  were  built 
for  the  engineers  and  the  workmen,  and  the 
Jetties  were  begun.  Eads  was  not  able  to 
be  there  in  person  all  the  time,  but  as 
usual  his  choice  of  competent  and  faithful 
lieutenants  was  noteworthy.  His  plans  were 
approved  by  an  advisory  board  of  very  emi- 
nent engineers ;  and  by  the  end  of  one 
year  the  value  of  the  work  began  to  show. 
As  yet  it  was  not  very  strong  or  solid,  but 
it  had  deepened  the  water  on  the  bar  from 
nine  to  sixteen  feet. 

None  the  less  the  storm  of  detraction 
continued.  There  were  enough  difficulties 
to  meet  without  this,  but  none  of  them  was 
met  more  forcibly.  It  was  never  Eads's  way 
to  attack  other  people  in  a  malicious  spirit, 
for  he  was  never  jealous ;  nor  did  he  often 
deign  to  answer  purely  personal  attacks. 
But  in  defense  of  his  undertakings,  to  pro- 
tect them  and  the  people  who  had  put  money 
into  them,  he  was  ready  to  fight.  His  de- 
fense commonly  took  the  form  of  criticism 
of  his  critics,  and  in  such  writing  his  pen 
was  decidedly  trenchant.  Probably  no  man 


92  JAMES  B.  EADS 

ever  incurred  more  foolish  criticism,  and 
probably  none  ever  pointed  out  more  plainly 
how  foolish  it  was.  Even  "  the  ablest  of 
his  adversaries  confessed  themselves  afraid 
of  his  pen."  Besides  this  parrying  of  at- 
tack, he  was  continually  writing  and  talking 
to  show  the  simplicity  and  feasibility  of  his 
method;  and  one  man  phrased  what  it  is 
likely  many  exemplified,  that  a  few  minutes' 
conversation  with  Eads  had  done  more  to 
convert  him  to  the  Jetties  than  any  amount 
of  writing  and  of  talking  with  other  people 
could  have  done.  Always  modest  and  un- 
assuming, he  was  so  thoroughly  in  earnest 
that  he  convinced  others  by  his  own  convic- 
tion. 

Never  was  a  man  less  afraid  to  work. 
Years  before,  in  the  diving-bell  days,  he  had 
set  himself  the  precedent  of  never  asking  an 
employee  to  do  what  he  himself  would  fear 
to  do.  And,  on  tiie  other  hand,  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  ask  an  employee  to  do  as  much 
work  as  he  himself  would  have  done.  His 
former  confidential  clerk  has  told  me  that 
sometimes,  after  evenings  of  discussion,  Eads 


THE   JETTIES  93 

on  starting  to  bed,  perhaps  at  midnight, 
would  say  to  him,  "  Now,  have  that  figured 
out  for  me  in  the  morning,"  which  meant 
three  or  four  hours  of  scrupulous  figuring  or 
writing  to  be  done  by  eight  the  next  morning. 

Undoubtedly  he  could  not  have  worked 
so  hard  as  he  did  himself  had  he  not  been 
able  to  throw  aside  his  cares  and  problems 
when  he  was  not  actively  engaged  with 
them.  A  very  sociable  man,  he  liked  not 
only  to  be  with  people,  but  to  be  making 
them  enjoy  themselves.  Thus  he  was  both 
generous  and  jovial.  No  one  loved  more 
to  give  presents ;  no  one  knew  more  droll 
stories  and  more  poetry.  Nor  was  his  jo- 
viality by  any  means  a  descent ;  for  not 
only  before  royalty  was  he  dignified,  but 
in  the  most  democratic  assembly.  His  was 
not,  however,  a  forbidding  dignity.  Simple- 
hearted  as  a  child,  he  was  fond  of  children, 
and  they  were  fond  of  him. 

Of  course,  he  kept  up  his  miscellaneous 
reading.  He  was  specially  devoted  to  po- 
etry ;  and  loved  not  only  to  recite  verse 
upon  verse  aloud,  but  also  to  read  to  his 


94  JAMES  B.  EADS 

friends  and  associates.  As  usual,  his  enthu- 
siasm spread  to  others.  One  old  lady  has 
told  me  that  she  never  had  thought  much  of 
poetry  till  she  heard  him  read  it.  Burns 
and  Edwin  Arnold  and  Tennyson  were  fa- 
vorites ;  and  there  is  a  letter  written  by  Eads 
to  Tennyson,  apparently  to  send  him  a  clip- 
ping in  which  the  one  was  described  recit- 
ing from  the  other's  poems.  Eads  excuses 
himself  for  intruding  with  his  tribute,  and 
remarks  that  both  of  them  have  built  works 
destined  to  outlive  their  authors.  He  says 
it  quite  modestly  and  candidly,  aas  equal 
comes  to  equal ;  throne  to  throne." 

Yet  despite  the  confidence  of  their  builder, 
despite  his  cheerfulness,  the  Jetties  were  not 
getting  along  well.  To  be  sure,  they  were 
steadily  deepening  the  channel,  and  thereby 
proving  to  all  ingenuous  persons  who  were 
undeceived  that  jetties  were  what  had  long 
been  needed,  and  that  they  should  be  helped 
along  and  finished.  But  the  Jetties  were 
situated  far  off  in  a  remote  marshland 
where  few  people  saw  them ;  consequently 
nearly  everybody  was  either  deceived  or  was 


THE    JETTIES  95 

disingenuous.  People  who  had  no  business 
to  interfere  did  interfere.  Every  hitch  was 
shouted  abroad,  every  success  was  concealed 
or  twisted.  Concrete  difficulties  were  enor- 
mous. Sudden  storms  at  just  the  wrong 
time  delayed  and  undid  the  work.  The 
need  for  more  money  was  pressing,  and  it 
could  be  borrowed  only  at  exorbitant  rates 
of  interest.  The  newspapers  were  clamor- 
ing that  the  rash  experiment  was  a  failure ; 
and  though,  of  course,  it  was  not  a  failure, 
still  it  might  have  fallen  through,  when  one 
day  the  Cromwell  liner,  Hudson,  drawing 
over  fourteen  feet  of  water,  came  in  through 
the  Jetties,  and  they  were  saved. 

Although  the  prestige  of  the  undertaking 
was  thus  established,  Eads  realized  that 
his  contract  with  the  government  was  too 
severe.  Not  that  he  asked  to  be  paid  be- 
forehand for  his  work,  but  he  did  ask  to  be 
paid  as  the  work  was  actually  done.  So 
evident  were  his  energy,  skill,  and  good 
faith  that  Congress  promptly  voted  him  an 
advance  of  a  million  dollars.  It  also  sent  a 
commission  to  inspect  and  to  report  on  the 


96  JAMES  B.  EADS 

progress  and  efficiency  of  the  works.  This 
commission,  while  reporting  favorably,  ad- 
vised against  any  further  advance  payments. 
But  Congress,  nevertheless,  voted  him  three- 
quarters  of  a  million  more.  It  is  said  that 
this  is  the  only  instance  where  the  govern- 
ment has  voted  money  to  an  individual  in 
advance  of  the  specific  terms  of  his  agree- 
ment. Moreover,  his  contract  was  re-ar- 
ranged so  as  to  be  less  oppressive. 

It  has  been  said  that  if  Eads  had  failed 
with  the  Jetties  he  would  not  only  have  de- 
stroyed his  reputation,  but  he  would  have 
been  a  beggar,  —  though,  some  one  added, 
he  would  still  have  deserved  everlasting 
gratitude  for  his  efforts  and  sacrifices.  And 
now  he  had  already  succeeded  in  changing 
the  little  pass  into  a  grand  channel  of  com- 
merce sufficient  for  the  largest  shipping 
that  visited  New  Orleans.  Yet  the  violent 
opposition  and  the  calumnies  still  continued. 
There  was  a  wonderful  persistency  in  the 
false  reports  which  came  from  bitter  oppo- 
nents who  would  not  be  convinced.  The 
foolishness  and  ignorance  of  their  arguments 


THE    JETTIES  97 

are  almost  incredible.  But  however  fool- 
ish, they  had  to  be  disproved ;  and  Eads  set 
himself  patiently  to  work  to  point  out  the 
errors  in  logic  and  in  physics ;  and  in  doing 
so  he  wrote  what  those  who  know  call  one 
of  the  greatest  works  on  river  hydraulics. 

While  there  were  so  many  men's  hands 
against  Eads,  it  is  pleasant  to  record  that 
there  were  also  many  for  him.  It  was  the 
"  Scientific  American  "  which  first  suggested 
his  name  for  the  presidency.  It  advocated 
him  as  a  fearless,  honest,  and  forceful  man ; 
but  the  peculiar  compliment  in  it  was  that 
this  was  a  technical  paper  that  upheld  him. 
The  proposal  was  repeated  in  many  news- 
papers, but  Eads  had  no  more  intention 
now  than  ever  of  going  into  politics.  He 
knew  in  what  line  he  could  do  most  for  his 
country,  and  had  an  ambition  rather  to  be 
a  supremely  useful  engineer  than  to  be  pre- 
sident. 

Another  of  his  admirers  was  the  late  Em- 
peror of  Brazil,  Dom  Pedro  II.,  who,  after  a 
visit  to  the  Jetties,  first  tried  to  persuade 
Eads  to  go  to  Brazil  to  do  some  very  impor- 


98  JAMES  B.  EADS 

tant  work  for  Mm,  and  who  then,  failing 
that,  sent  him  a  personal  letter  asking  him 
to  recommend  an  engineer.  And  he  engaged 
the  one  whom  Eads  recommended. 

In  1879,  a  little  over  four  years  from  the 
time  the  Jetties  were  begun,  the  United 
States  inspecting  officer  there  reported  the 
maximum  depth  of  thirty  feet  and  the  re- 
quired width  and  depths  throughout  the 
channel.  Thereupon  all  the  remainder  of 
the  price  agreed  was  paid  over  to  Eads,  ex- 
cepting a  million  dollars,  which  was  kept,  at 
interest,  as  a  guarantee,  during  twenty  years' 
actual  maintenance  of  the  channel.  Omit- 
ting from  the  count  every  day  of  deficient 
channel,  these  twenty  years  are  now  (1900) 
almost  over ;  the  results  in  the  channel  and 
in  the  part  of  the  gulf  just  beyond  the  Jet- 
ties have  been  precisely  and  entirely  what 
the  projector  of  the  works  predicted  when 
he  began  them.  The  bar  has  never  formed 
again.  The  Jetties  themselves,  so  far  from 
having  to  be  lengthened,  are  shorter  than 
they  were  originally  designed.  In  a  word, 
the  sole  legitimate  objection  that  can  be 


THE   JETTIES  99 

made  to  them  is  that  they  do  not  furnish  a 
great  enough  depth.  Of  course  they  furnish 
the  required  depth,  and  as  great  a  depth  un- 
doubtedly as  can  possibly  be  had  in  the  lit- 
tle South  Pass.  Ships,  however,  now  draw 
more  water  than  they  did  twenty-five  years 
ago,  and  a  still  deeper  channel  is  needed. 
The  best  proof  of  the  success  of  the  present 
one  is  that  the  government  is  preparing  to 
apply  the  same  plan  to  the  big  South  West 
Pass,  which  Eads  begged  to  open  and  was 
not  allowed  to.  It  is  said  that  in  that  pass 
he  would  have  produced  thirty  feet  in  one 
year.  But  nothing  is  more  useless  to  dis- 
cuss than  what  might  have  been.  What 
Eads  has  accomplished  with  his  Jetties  is 
certain. 

One  result  of  his  achievement  was  a  quick 
improvement  in  prices.  Every  acre,  mill, 
farmhouse  in  the  whole  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley  was  increased  in  value  by  the  impetus 
which  the  open  river-mouth  gave  to  com- 
merce. New  Orleans  rose  from  the  eleventh 
to  the  second  export  city  in  the  country. 
Consequently  there  was  a  great  increase  in 


100  JAMES  B.  EADS 

the  number  of  lines  of  ships  going  there, 
and  in  their  tonnage.  And  as  a  result  of 
that  there  was  a  rapid  increase  in  railway 
facilities.  In  twenty  years  from  the  com- 
mencement of  the  Jetties  there  was  a  gain  of 
one  hundred  per  cent,  in  the  total  commerce 
of  New  Orleans,  nearly  all  of  it  due  to  these 
works.  This  boom  has,  despite  the  marvelous 
multiplication  of  railways,  preserved  the  river 
traffic ;  and  the  river  traffic,  as  always,  has 
by  competition  lowered  freight  rates.  The 
effect  has  spread  to  remote  districts  ;  and  by 
this  reduction  in  rates  and  prices  there  is 
no  doubt  that  the  Jetties  have  made  living 
cheaper  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard  as  well  as 
in  the  Mississippi  Valley. 

Even  more :  in  another  way  they  have 
made  living  cheaper.  The  half-rail-and- 
half-water  route  from  the  Pacific  coast  to 
New  York  via  New  Orleans,  which  the  Jet- 
ties first  made  possible,  forced  the  trans- 
continental railways  to  cut  down  their  time 
for  shipping  freight  over  one  half.  The 
tonnage  by  this  newer  route  has  increased 
enormously,  and  its  competition  has  affected 


THE   JETTIES  101 

commerce  by  reducing  all  rates  from  the 
Mississippi  Valley  and  the  West  and  the 
Pacific  slope  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard  and 
to  Europe.  As  a  consequence  bread  has 
been  made  cheaper  to  all  the  great  popula- 
tions that  require  the  food  products  of  the 
central  zone  and  the  Pacific  slope. 

Another  very  different  but  curious  change 
is  probably  largely  due  to  the  Jetties.  Be- 
fore their  construction  only  very  light- 
draught  ships  could  safely  reach  New 
Orleans;  but  it  was  so  favorite  a  cotton 
port  that  many  owners  would  build  vessels 
of  unusually  light  draught,  in  order  that 
they  might  make  one  trip  a  year  to  New 
Orleans  with  them,  although  the  rest  of  the 
time  they  sailed  to  deeper  ports.  As  soon 
as  it  became  known  over  the  shipping  world 
that  New  Orleans  was  now  open  to  deep- 
draught  vessels,  a  great  many  new  ones  were 
built.  Thus  the  Jetties,  as  much  as  any 
other  cause,  brought  in  the  era  of  great 
ships. 

It  has  been  calculated  from  statistics, 
which  it  is  not  necessary  to  give  here,  that 


102  JAMES  B.  EADS 

the  annual  saving  to  producers  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi Valley  brought  about  by  the  fall  of 
rates,  the  saving  in  marine  insurance,  and 
the  saving  in  time,  due  to  the  Jetties,  is 
$5,000,000 ;  and  it  is  furthermore  calcu- 
lated that  the  annual  money  value  of  the 
Jetties  to  the  people  of  the  country  at  large 
is,  by  a  very  conservative  estimate,  $25,- 
000,000. 

Even  the  Jetties,  however,  were  not  the 
end  of  Eads's  efforts  toward  the  improve- 
ment of  the  Mississippi.  For  several  years 
before  their  completion  he  had  been  deliver- 
ing addresses  urging  the  application  of  the 
same  system  to  the  entire  alluvial  basin  of 
the  river  from  the  gulf  to  Cairo.  People 
were  in  despair  as  to  what  to  do  to  prevent 
the  breaking  of  the  levees  (the  results  of 
which  are  as  "terrible  to  the  dwellers  on 
those  flats  as  the  avalanche  to  people  who 
live  on  the  sides  of  steep  mountains "), 
and  the  distress  and  prostration  created  by 
the  awful  spring  floods.  Most  people 
thought  there  were  two  possible  remedies,  — 
to  build  more  and  higher  levees,  and  to 


THE    JETTIES  103 

drain  off  some  of  the  volume  of  the  river 
through  the  Louisiana  bayous.  But  Eads 
insisted  that  the  requisite  move  was  to 
reduce  the  excessive  width  of  certain 
stretches  of  the  river  with  willow  mattresses ; 
by  uniformity  of  width  to  produce  uniformity 
of  depth,  and  consequently  uniformity  of 
current.  This  would  facilitate  the  discharge 
of  floods,  and  would  tend  to  lessen  the  need 
of  any  levees,  whereas  drawing  off  any  of 
the  volume  of  water,  he  said,  would  increase 
the  elevation  of  its  surface  slope,  and  thus 
necessitate  higher  levees. 

His  arguments  on  the  question  are  clear 
and  forcible ;  and  it  is  likely  that  his  plan, 
if  carried  out,  would  solve  the  important 
question  of  the  Mississippi.  But  enough 
money  to  try  it  thoroughly  has  never  been 
appropriated ;  and  so  little  effect  has  patch- 
ing had,  that  at  this  very  day  there  are  still 
advocates  of  the  scheme  of  drawing  off  some 
of  the  water,  —  a  scheme  which  Eads  blasted 
years  ago. 

In  1879  the  Mississippi  River  Commission 
was  created,  consisting  of  one  civilian  and 


104  JAMES  B.  EADS 

six  military  and  civil  engineers,  of  whom 
Eads  was  one.  But  for  him  the  govern- 
ment would  not  have  undertaken,  at  any 
rate  at  that  time,  its  very  comprehensive 
system  of  river  improvement,  founded  pri- 
marily on  his  theory.  Besides  giving  a 
regular,  deepened  channel,  and  putting  an 
end  to  overflows,  he  contended  that  his 
system  would  reclaim  about  30,000  square 
miles  of  rich  alluvial  lands  subject  to  inun- 
dation. For  two  years  he  served  on  this 
commission :  for  many  years  before  he  had 
been  working  and  fighting  for  the  same 
grand  result,  —  grand  though  almost  fruit- 
less. "He  had  no  selfish  interest  to  sub- 
serve" in  this;  "no  contract  to  execute; 
nothing  himself  to  gain."  But  when,  on 
returning  from  a  trip  to  Europe,  he  found 
that  the  work  was  no  longer  being  carried 
on  as  he  thought  it  should  be,  he  resigned 
from  the  commission.  Deploring  the  wrong 
methods  used,  he  still  was  most  deeply  in- 
terested in  this  great  work  up  to  the  time  of 
his  death.  If,  some  day,  the  Mississippi  is 
conquered,  it  will  doubtless  be  through  the 
means  he  pointed  out. 


THE   SHIP-KAILWAY 

WHEN  the  Jetties  were  finished  and  paid 
for,  Eads  found  himself  in  a  very  good  sit- 
uation. Not  only  was  his  bold  scheme 
proved  to  be  a  complete  success,  but  it  had 
in  the  end  paid  him  well;  and  he  was  pro- 
mised still  further  payment  for  maintaining 
his  works  twenty  years  longer.  His  reputa- 
tion was  world-wide.  He  was  now  fifty- 
nine  years  old.  Five  years  later,  in  1884, 
he  went  to  live  in  New  York.  It  is  not 
hard  to  imagine  why  so  busy  a  man  wished 
to  be  more  in  the  centre  of  things,  though, 
for  that  matter,  he  had  not  for  some  years 
past  spent  much  of  his  time  at  home.  There 
was  too  much  to  make  him  travel.  Besides 
the  frequent  voyages  which  he  was  ordered 
to  take  for  the  sake  of  his  health,  —  and 
which,  as  he  was  a  very  bad  sailor,  he  said 
were  real  medicine,  —  he  was  in  demand 


106  JAMES  B.  EADS 

here  and  there,  in  places  miles  apart,  for 
professional  services ;  and  then,  too,  he  vis- 
ited many  engineering  works  in  various  re- 
mote lands,  —  river  improvements,  docks, 
the  Suez  Canal.  It  was  not  alone  that  his 
curiosity  was  always  healthy,  but  also  that 
his  education  —  the  broad,  useful  education 
that  he  gave  himself  —  was  never  ended. 

We  have  seen  how  he  refused  to  go  to 
Brazil.  He  was  also  wanted  at  Jackson- 
ville, Florida,  where  the  citizens  called  him 
in  1878  to  examine  the  mouth  of  the  Saint 
John's  River,  and  to  report  on  the  practica- 
bility of  deepening  the  channel  through  the 
bar  with  jetties.  He  went  there,  and,  after 
a  personal  examination,  presented  a  very 
elaborate  report.  In  1880  the  governor  of 
California  had  requested  him  to  act  as  con- 
sulting engineer  of  that  State,  and  he  ac- 
cordingly visited  the  Sacramento  River,  and 
reported  upon  the  plans  for  the  preservation 
of  its  channel  and  the  arrest  of  debris  from 
the  mines.  In  1881  he  was  consulted  by 
the  Canadian  Minister  of  Public  Works  on 
the  improvement  of  the  harbor  of  Toronto, 


THE  SHIP-RAILWAY  107 

which  he  also  examined.  This  was  the  first 
instance  in  which  the  Canadian  government 
had  ever  employed  an  American  engineer. 
When  he  was  in  Mexico,  the  government 
there  asked  him  for  reports  on  the  harbors 
of  Vera  Cruz  and  Tampico  and  suggestions 
for  their  improvement.  Although  he  did 
not  examine  these  two  harbors  personally, 
he  drew  up  plans  on  surveys  furnished  by 
engineers  whom  he  sent  there ;  and  the 
work  which  has  since  been  carried  out  after 
his  instructions  has  proved  eminently  satis- 
factory. Again,  it  was  the  people  of  Vicks- 
burg  who  sent  for  him  to  tell  them  how  to 
better  their  harbor ;  and  at  another  time  he 
was  consulted  about  the  Columbia  Kiver  in 
Oregon  and  about  Humboldt  Bay.  In 
1885  the  Brazilian  Emperor  made  a  second 
attempt  to  secure  his  services  for  an  exami- 
nation of  the  Eio  Grande  del  Sul,  but  ill 
health  and  pressing  business  prevented  his 
acceptance  of  the  offer  ;  nor  was  he  able  to 
undertake  the  examination  of  the  harbor  of 
Oporto  requested  by  the  Portuguese  govern- 
ment. It  seems  superfluous  to  say  that  all 


108  JAMES  B.  EADS 

the  reports  he  did  make  "  were  exhaustive 
and  eminently  instructive  in  their  treatment 
of  the  subjects  discussed." 

Perhaps  the  two  most  important  profes- 
sional cases  submitted  to  him  were  those  in 
1884  on  the  estuary  and  bar  of  the  Mersey 
River  and  on  Galveston  Harbor.  In  the 
case  of  the  Mersey  he  was  called  in,  at  the 
solicitation  of  the  Mersey  Docks  and  Har- 
bor Board  of  Liverpool,  to  settle  a  dispute. 
Appearing  before  a  committee  of  the  House 
of  Lords,  he  gave  his  testimony  as  to  the 
effect  which  the  proposed  terminal  works  of 
the  Manchester  ship  canal  would  hare  upon 
the  estuary  of  the  Mersey  and  the  bar  at  Liv- 
erpool. "  He  brought  to  the  solution  of  this 
question  that  same  keen  insight  into  hydrau- 
lics and  the  same  close  application  that  had 
made  him  so  successful  in  this  country." 
He  showed  so  plainly  what  would  inevitably 
be  the  deleterious  results  of  the  proposed 
plans  that  the  committee  decided  against 
them.  Subsequently  they  were  changed  to 
conform  to  his  suggestions.  For  this  report 
he  received  <£3500,  said  to  have  been  the 


THE  SHIP-RAILWAY  109 

largest  fee  ever  paid  to  a  consulting  engi- 
neer. 

In  the  Galveston  case,  the  same  year,  he 
was  requested,  not  only  by  the  city  but  by 
the  state  legislature,  to  formulate  a  plan  and 
to  take  a  contract  from  the  United  States 
government  for  improving  that  harbor. 
The  government  had  already  been  carrying 
on  works  there  for  several  years  and  accom- 
plishing nothing.  Indeed,  it  was  the  jetty 
method  —  by  this  time  more  highly  thought 
of  than  ten  years  before  —  which  was  being 
attempted,  but  not  in  proper  form.  Eads, 
after  long  and  careful  study  of  the  situation, 
made  a  plan,  which  he  offered  to  carry  out 
on  conditions  very  similar  to  those  adopted 
in  the  case  of  the  Mississippi  Jetties,  but 
Congress  was  not  willing  to  grant  the  con- 
tract. Since  then,  however,  the  works  there 
have  been  altered  according  to  his  sugges- 
tions, and  have  consequently  been  more  suc- 
cessful. 

For  a  good  many  years,  owing  to  the 
weakness  of  his  lungs  and  to  other  illness, 
Eads  had  not  only  had  to  travel  much  for 


110  JAMES  B.  EADS 

his  health,  but  to  take  special  care  of  him- 
self generally ;  and  yet,  to  judge  from  the 
following  account,  in  the  first  person,  of  how 
he  had  spent  the  year  1880,  it  seems  that 
his  wondrous  energy  had  not  failed :  "  I  in- 
spected the  River  Danube  about  800  miles  of 
its  course;  and  investigated  the  cause  and 
extent  of  the  frightful  inundation  at  Sze- 
gedin,  in  Hungary,  which  involved  an  exami- 
nation of  150  miles  of  the  Theiss  River.  I 
also  examined  the  Suez  Canal,  to  familiarize 
myself  more  thoroughly  with  the  question 
of  a  ship  canal  across  the  American  isthmus, 
having  previously  visited  the  Amsterdam 
ship  canal  and  the  one  at  the  mouth  of  the 
River  Rhone.  As  a  member  of  the  Missis- 
sippi River  Commission  I  also  aided  in  per- 
fecting the  plans  for  the  improvement  of 
that  river,  and  the  preparation  of  its  report 
now  under  consideration  before  Congress. 
As  consulting  engineer  of  the  State  of  Cal- 
ifornia I  made  a  thorough  inspection  of  the 
Sacramento  River,  to  consider  the  best 
method  of  repairing  the  injury  to  its  navi- 
gation caused  by  the  hydraulic  mining  oper- 


THE  SHIP-RAILWAY  111 

ations  there,  and  submitted  a  lengthy  report 
upon  it.  On  my  way  back  I  visited  the 
wonders  of  the  Yellowstone  Park,  crossing 
the  Eocky  Mountains  in  that  excursion  six 
different  times.  Within  this  time  I  have 
thrice  visited  the  Jetties  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi,  besides  my  visit  to  the  city  of 
Mexico,  Tehuantepec,  and  Yucatan.  ...  I 
have  also,  at  the  request  of  the  mayor  and 
council  of  Vicksburg,  twice  visited  that  city 
during  the  last  year,  to  examine  its  harbor 
with  a  view  to  its  improvement." 

In  1884  Eads  received  perhaps  the  most 
distinguished  honor  of  his  career  —  the  award 
of  the  Albert  Medal.  As  it  came  only  two 
or  three  months  after  the  report  on  the 
Mersey,  it  was  undoubtedly  due  to  that  as 
its  immediate  cause,  although  the  Jetties 
were  almost  specifically  named  as  the  reason 
for  this  honor,  —  and  Eads  had  not  by  any 
means  lacked  even  earlier  appreciation  in 
England.  Three  years  before,  at  a  meet- 
ing of  the  British  Association,  he  had 
been  urged,  nay  pressed,  to  deliver  an  im- 
promptu address  on  his  works,  both  com- 


112  JAMES  B.  EADS 

pleted  and  projected.  Nevertheless,  it  was 
not  until  after  the  Mersey  report  that  the 
Albert  Medal  was  conferred  upon  him. 
This  medal,  founded  in  1862  in  memory  of 
the  Prince  Consort,  is  awarded  annually  by 
the  Society  for  the  Encouragement  of  Arts, 
Manufactures,  and  Commerce.  It  was  in 
Eads's  case  awarded  "  as  a  token  of  their 
appreciation  of  the  services  he  had  rendered 
to  the  science  of  engineering,"  to  the  engi- 
neer "  whose  works  have  been  of  such  great 
service  in  improving  the  water  communica- 
tions of  North  America,  and  have  thereby 
rendered  valuable  aid  to  the  commerce  of 
the  world."  He  was  the  second  American 
citizen  and  the  first  native-born  American 
to  receive  this  medal. 

Of  course  he  belonged  to  many  scientific 
organizations.  He  was  a  member  of  the 
Engineers  Club  of  Saint  Louis,  and  for  two 
years  president  of  the  Academy  of  Science 
there ;  he  was  also  a  member  of  the  Ameri- 
can Geographical  Society,  of  the  Institution 
of  Civil  Engineers,  Great  Britain,  and  of 
the  British  Association,  and  of  the  Society 


THE  SHIP-RAILWAY  113 

for  the  Encouragement  of  Arts,  Manufac- 
tures, and  Commerce ;  a  fellow  of  the  Amer- 
ican Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science;  and  a  member,  fellow,  and  for  a 
year  vice-president  of  the  American  Society 
of  Civil  Engineers. 

He  was  now  a  person  whose  return  from 
Europe,  with  plans  for  river  improvement, 
and  news  about  a  fresh  engineering  scheme, 
was  an  item  in  the  small  as  well  as  the 
large  newspapers.  For,  since  the  Jetties 
were  finished,  he  had  a  new  scheme,  —  a 
decidedly  new  one  it  seemed  to  most  peo- 
ple, —  though,  as  formerly,  he  made  no  pre- 
tense of  having  originated  the  idea.  Instead 
of  resting  content,  now  that  he  was  almost 
sixty,  —  rich,  and  honored,  and  frail,  —  in- 
stead of  resting  content  on  his  laurels  of  the 
gunboats,  the  Bridge,  the  Jetties,  he  was  as 
active  as  ever,  with  the  hope  of  opening 
more  roads  to  commerce  and  prosperity. 
The  publication  of  the  proceedings  of  De 
Lesseps's  Interoceanic  Canal  Congress  in 
1879  gave  Eads  an  opportunity  to  propose, 
in  a  letter  to  the  New  York  "  Tribune,"  his 


114  JAMES  B.  EADS 

own  project  for  spanning  the  isthmus.  The 
Tehuantepec  route  from  the  Gulf  of  Mexico 
to  the  Pacific  would  be,  in  the  general  lines 
of  travel,  about  2000  miles  shorter  than 
the  Panama  route,  or  1500  miles  shorter 
than  the  Nicaragua.  And  it  was  at  Tehuan- 
tepec that  Eads  proposed  building,  not  a 
canal,  but  a  ship-railway.  The  proposition 
was  astounding.  It  certainly  suggested 
very  picturesque  visions  of  transportation; 
but  at  first  sight  it  did  not  sound  very  prac- 
ticable. However,  Eads  held  that  it  pre- 
sented six  great  and  purely  practical  advan- 
tages :  First,  it  could  be  built  for  much 
less  than  the  cost  of  a  canal.  Secondly,  it 
could  be  built  in  one  quarter  of  the  time. 
Thirdly,  it  could,  with  absolute  safety, 
transport  ships  more  rapidly.  Fourthly, 
its  actual  cost  could  be  more  accurately  fore- 
told. Fifthly,  the  expense  of  maintaining 
it  would  be  less  than  for  a  canal.  Sixthly, 
its  capacity  could  be  easily  increased  to  meet 
future  requirements. 

In  1880  he  appeared  before  a  committee 
of  the  House,  and  in  reply  to  De  Lesseps, 


THE  SHIP-RAILWAY  115 

who  was  advocating  the  Panama  Canal,  he 
stated  his  plan  for  the  ship-railway.  A  few 
months  later  he  went  to  Mexico,  where  the 
government  gave  him,  besides  a  very  valu- 
able concession  for  building  the  ship-rail- 
way, its  cordial  assistance  in  his  surveys. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  Mexico  requested 
his  aid  in  improving  its  two  harbors,  and 
when  he  returned  home,  sent  him  in  the 
Mexican  man-of-war,  the  Independencia. 
The  next  year  he  proposed  to  Congress  to 
build  the  ship-railway  at  his  own  risk,  and 
to  give  the  United  States  special  privileges, 
which  had  been  arranged  for  in  his  Mexican 
charter,  provided  the  government  would,  as 
he  proved  the  practicability  of  his  plan  by 
actual  construction  and  operation,  guarantee 
part  of  the  ship-railway's  dividends.  Al- 
though this  arrangement  would  have  laid  as 
little  risk  on  the  government  as  the  jetty 
arrangement  had,  it  was  not  accepted. 

Strange  and  even  unnatural  as  the  idea 
itself  appeared,  it  was  adapted  from  per- 
fectly simple  ship-railways  already  in  exist- 
ence and  in  satisfactory  use.  Science,  he 


116  JAMES  B.  EADS 

said,  could  do  anything,  however  tremen- 
dous, if  it  had  enough  money.  In  the  mag- 
nified form  contemplated,  the  plan  provided 
for  a  single  track  of  a  dozen  parallel  rails, 
and  a  car  with  1500  wheels.  On  this  car 
was  to  be  a  huge  cradle  into  which  any 
ship  might  be  floated  and  carefully  propped. 
The  car  having  then  been  hauled  up  a  very 
slight  incline  out  of  the  water,  and  monster, 
double-headed  locomotives  hitched  to  it,  by 
gentle  grades  it  and  the  ship  were  to  be 
drawn  across  to  the  other  ocean  a  hundred 
miles  away,  where  the  ship  could  be  floated 
again.  To  obviate  any  chance  of  straining 
the  ships,  all  curves  were  to  be  avoided  by 
the  use  of  turn-tables. 

Nevertheless,  many  people  believed  that 
such  a  journey  would  strain  a  ship  so  much 
that  it  would  never  float  afterwards.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  is  so  imposing  an 
array  of  names  of  distinguished  engineers, 
shipbuilders,  and  seamen,  who  declared  that 
the  plan  was  feasible  in  every  particular, 
that  it  is  hard  to  think  they  could  all  have 
been  mistaken  in  thus  supporting  the  lead- 


THE  SHIP-RAILWAY  117 

ing  engineer  of  the  day.  It  may  easily  be 
supposed  that  every  other  imaginable  and 
unimaginable  objection  was  raised,  but  to 
one  and  all  Eads  gave  an  answer  that 
sounded  conclusive. 

As  usual  he  was  willing  to  back  up  his 
ideas  with  money,  and  he  had  the  most 
elaborate  surveys  made,  and  remarkable 
models  prepared  to  show  the  working  of  the 
ship-railway.  He  preached  this  new  crusade 
of  science  with  his  customary  vigor.  So 
many  men  were  financially  interested  in  the 
project,  or  were  ready  to  be,  that  it  would 
at  all  events  have  been  tested,  had  not  its 
leading  spirit,  the  very  life  of  it,  died. 

Even  though  he  was  at  the  same  time 
engaged  in  investigations  so  important  as 
those  at  the  Mersey  and  at  Galveston,  Eads 
devoted  the  last  six  years  of  his  life  mainly 
to  this  daring  and  tremendous  enterprise. 
In  1885,  after  obtaining  from  the  Mexican 
government  a  modification  of  his  concession, 
guaranteeing  one  third  of  the  net  revenue 
per  annum,  he  had  a  bill  introduced  in  Con- 
gress, whereby,  when  the  ship-railway  should 


118  .      JAMES  B.  EADS 

be  entirely  finished  and  in  operation,  the 
United  States  was  to  guarantee  the  other 
two  thirds.  Though  this  bill  was  favorably 
reported,  Eads  finally  decided  to  withdraw 
it,  and  to  ask  after  all  for  a  simple  charter, 
which  would  doubtless  have  been  granted. 
During  those  six  years  there  was  perhaps 
not  another  man  in  the  country  who  was  so 
able  to  persuade  others  of  the  scientific, 
financial,  commercial  soundness  of  his  pro- 
jects. If,  more  than  any  one  else,  he  could 
make  a  scheme  appeal,  it  was  not  that  it  was 
in  any  sinister  sense  a  scheme,  but  because 
his  tact  and  his  address  were  pleasing,  his 
reputation  firmly  grounded  for  honesty  and 
common-sense  as  well  as  for  thorough  scien- 
tific knowledge,  so  that  his  enthusiasm  was 
contagious.  His  enemies  might  call  him  a 
lobbyist,  but  his  sole  means  of  persuasion 
were  the  soundness  of  his  views,  the  clear- 
ness of  his  arguments,  and  the  fervor  of  his 
wish  to  benefit  his  country. 

For  this  undertaking,  as  for  his  previous 
ones,  Eads  invented  many  devices.  All  in 
all  he  held  nearly  fifty  patents  from  the 


THE  SHIP-RAILWAY  119 

United  States  and  England  for  useful  in- 
ventions in  naval  warfare,  bridge  foundations 
and  superstructure,  dredging  machines,  nav- 
igation, river  and  harbor  works,  and  ship- 
railway  construction. 

In  January,  1887,  when  his  bill  was  to 
come  up,  he  went  to  Washington.  He  was 
in  such  poor  health  that  he  was  not  able  to 
remain  there,  but  on  his  doctor's  advice  he 
went  with  his  wife  and  one  daughter  to 
Nassau.  While  sick  there,  he  was  still  at 
work  on  improvements  for  his  ship-railway. 
He  was  wont  to  say  to  his  intimate  friends, 
"  I  shall  not  die  until  I  accomplish  this 
work,  and  see  with  my  own  eyes  great  ships 
pass  from  ocean  to  ocean  over  the  land." 
But  in  Nassau  it  was  soon  known  that  he 
was  dying ;  and  still  he  said,  "I  cannot  die ; 
I  have  not  finished  my  work." 

He  died  March  8,  1887,  not  quite  sixty- 
seven  years  of  age.  No  one  has  finished 
his  work. 

In  any  career  there  are  three  main  ele- 
ments of  success:  talent,  education,  work. 


120  JAMES  B.  EADS 

Eads's  life,  like  that  of  so  many  other  self- 
made  men,  seems  to  show  us  that  education 
is  less  important  than  the  other  two.  But 
while  it  is  true  that  he  had  not  the  formal 
education  of  an  engineer,  he  had  a  certain 
very  broad  training  gained  in  experience, 
and  had  read  hard.  Education,  after  all,  is 
nothing  but  a  summary  method  of  teaching 
the  lessons  of  life ;  therefore,  while  less  in- 
sistent, it  is  often  swifter  than  practical 
experience.  And  there  is  no  doubt  that  a 
man  like  Eads  would  be  the  first  to  deplore 
a  young  man's  failing  to  appreciate  its  value. 
When  he  himself  was  young,  he  never  sup- 
posed that  he  was  a  genius;  but  if  he  had 
thought  this,  he  would  have  striven  to  be 
the  best -read  and  the  best -equipped  of 
geniuses ;  believing  that  though  he  might  be 
mistaken  about  his  talent  he  could  make 
sure  of  his  culture. 


Electrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houston  6- 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

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REC  D  L.U 

MAY  4    '65  -it-  AM 

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^IkitviE  BY 

MAR  22  1977 

:  M  DEFT. 

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